The Apps Currently Saving My Life

That sounds like an oxymoron: apps saving my life? Well, it all works out because these apps keep me off other apps! Consolidation and time limits are a brilliant thing, my friends.

Never fear if you don't remember to post on social media every day and yet you never forget to spend time scrolling. You are not alone.

I'm not very self-disciplined. Right now I've committed to no sugar for 6 weeks (between my birthday my NYC birthday trip). To be honest, I've been trying to do this since Easter. And I don't know if I'm going to survive. The cravings are out of this world.

So ... all that to say, too bad there's not an app to keep me from eating sugar! Or I'd probably be doing better right now.

If you want to save time, read on.

For the purpose of scheduling posts in advance on social media, I'm sure most of you have heard of Hootsuite. Forget Hootsuite. You can't do much before paying for it.

Enter Buffer. My friends ... this has been a huge blessing. You can link up to 3 accounts at a time and schedule posts in advance. I use it for my FB page, Twitter, and IG feed. It's pretty great! And I've only accidentally posted on the wrong day while using it once. ;P

So if you're like and struggle with consistency on social media, this is a great tool to churn out some ideas and then not have to worry for a while! Of course, lack of interaction isn't great either ... but at least you can turn on notifications if you want to be able to keep up with comments and such in "prime time."

This can be used for endless things! Hiatuses without actually "leaving," vacations, periods with no wi-fi ... Planning ahead can be a beautiful thing.

For the purpose of limiting time spent on social media, I thought I was hopeless. Until my friend told me about AppDetox. *cue angelic choir*

It's amazing!!! You create "rules" for any apps on your phone. I've set time limits of 10 minutes a day for all my social media apps, but you can choose number of launches, times of day, etc. And you can choose any app on your phone!

I haven't even told you the best part: it kicks you off when you've hit your quota. Like closes the app and doesn't let you back in. (If this terrifies you, know you can pause the rule at any time.) The app also tracks rule breaks, usage time ... all sorts of things.

In a word, lifesaving.

The great news is, these two apps work really well together! It's easy to eat up my 10 minutes a day on a given social media account if I'm posting a lot. That motivates me to use Buffer to schedule posts in advance. That way, when I'm on, I'm using my time well--responding to interaction, checking up on people I actually care about, and only having a few minutes to scroll.

Buffer is available on Google Play and in the Apple Store, or jsut as a website. AppDetox is only for Android, but there are supposed to be Apple-compatible equivalents! So do your research, and let me know what you choose.

It may sound simple (and it is!), but it's also radical.

Have you used any apps like this before? Is time on social media for fun versus marketing/business a struggle for you too? Let me know what you've found that works!

The Perks of Reading Your Own Book

Due to writing a sequel, I forced myself to read the published version of Martin Hospitality a while back. Even though I'll never enjoy reading my own writing, I found a few fun things to do as I read that I recommend every writer do now!

Yes, this assumes you're fine with writing in books. I find it worth it (kind of liking using notebooks), but you could always do it with sticky notes, too, I suppose. Or in a notebook to the side. But trust me!! You don't want to skip these fun and helpful things.

Editing

We all know there are things we'd go back and change. The hardest part for me is not to change everything in word choice and structure. Try to take minimal notes like factual errors, typos, inconsistencies, etc. Must changes. Thankfully, with Createspace it's not hard to tweak your file and re-upload it.

I think everyone edits better on paper! So if you have time, it might be worth ordering a print copy of your final draft and doing this before you publish it. I may start implementing this because it's so helpful.

Note-taking

This is especially helpful for writing a sequel or any other books with recurring characters. How else are we supposed to remember what color so-and-so's eyes were or what mannerisms we gave the 6-year-old? It makes things easier to find if you highlight, underline . . . something. Who wants to spend their days searching through a digital copy of a manuscript anyway?

I kid you not when I say I couldn't be writing a sequel without  having done this! Beyond just reminding myself what I've already written, I also found lots of tiny little details that I mentioned once that could be full-blown threads in Book 2. Let's call it accidental foreshadowing.

If you have found a good note-taking system for details like this, I'd love to hear it! I just used a black pen and purple pen and had different underlining methods.

Annotating

This is so fun!!! I'm so glad I did this. Anytime I remembered what made me write something a particular way as I read (the source of inspiration or how it almost didn't make it in), I'd leave a note. I don't want to forget those things! And I get the feeling that they're the kind of things that readers love to know.

I have to say that the idea to do this came from Nadine Brandes. It's so worth doing, though, if only for your own amusement. If you do want to share them, I think they'd work wonderfully as insider's material for a street team or the like. (Again, Nadine is brilliant.)

For now, you can satisfy yourself with 50 facts about Martin Hospitality.

Have you ever read your own published book or annotated anything? What are your thoughts on writing in books?

If you want more info on what it's been like for me to write a sequel, look for my post as a part of Naomi's Inkling to Write writers' conference! It will contain a variety of topics on writing, the publishing journey, and marketing. My post just happens to be titled Slaying the Sequel Monster. ;)