By Rushing We Waste Time

Time. We are all given the same twenty-four hours each day. We are also given seven days in a week and fifty-two weeks in a year. However, we don’t all accomplish the same thing in the allotted time. Some people make every minute count. Others are fine squandering it away frivolously, not caring what happens with it. Of course, many times these are the same people whining later in life about wishing they could get the time back.

There are two time-wasters. One is not making proper use of your time, allowing yourself to get sidetracked into a million other non-essential things, such as Facebook updates or reruns of Gilligan’s Island. Instead of doing what you know you should be doing, you procrastinate, making every excuse you can not to do it. One of these rationalizations is that there will be time later, but then that time could best be spent doing something else.

The second time-waster is rushing to get something done, such as a book published. I have finished reading two books by indie authors who obviously did just that. They were in a hurry to get their work out, to “earn some money,” and slapped it together and hit publish. However, rushing hurt them by all indications of the reviews their books received. I withheld my review, because I will not give a bad review and that is what I would have had to give these two authors. Instead, I just skipped it.

The sad part is that these books had great potential. I loved the storylines, the settings, and most of the characters, or at least, the idea of the characters. Everything needed some more work, however. In their rush to be published they did not go back and edit their book properly. If either one was more than a first draft, I would be surprised. I think ideas came to one writer as she was typing and she just stuck it in as an “Oh, Yeah” moment and continued on as opposed to going back and working out the story for that scene, giving it some build up and foresight.

Because they rushed to get published, they produced shoddy work, which cost them sales I am sure, especially of future books. That is where they waste time. They did all of that work and now will suffer because they did not slow down and do it right. It was a waste of time, because they will not truly benefit from it other than the fact that they can say they have a book out.

One of the great things about being an indie author is that we are on our own deadline. We determine when a book is ready and when it will be published. We control our time and our schedule. We have the freedom to slow down and make every key stroke count. We determine what gets invested into our creation or not and it behooves us to throw everything into it that we can, especially time. Slow down. Edit. Revise. Edit again. It pays off in greater writing, which will hopefully pay off in greater sales. Time is on your side. Use every minute and create a masterpiece worth Tweeting about to your fans.

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