Are You Thinking Big?

This is a business. This is your business.  You are the creator of your business.

As professional writers, and we’ve all read this so many times, part of your business and creating your business if the art of changing plans midway, and being flexible about it. We might not like it, for example, when a book doesn’t seem to be ‘working’ the way it should.  When it takes a lot longer to edit your work, or when the income you planned isn’t panning out as fast as it could.

A good example hit home when I read over a Facebook conversation between two writing friends.  They have a mild competition between them in terms of getting things- blog posts or books- published at a certain time if not sooner. To them, timelines are everything even if it will hurt their long term goals.

It’s somewhat fun to read the banter between them, since it is generally all in good fun, but the point of ‘how much change can I take?’ hit home during this particular thread.

They both have very successful blogs, and both are determined men, so it’s not as if making money is a big thing for them but one pointed out he looks at the big picture before changing his entire line of thinking.  The other one is deeply involved in the day to day numbers- he looks at small trends and wonders what to do or if changes are needed.

The numbers are similar, but the effect is profound.

Should you change your small picture plans?

For some writers they will answer ‘of course,’  others will need to take a step back for a moment and think about ‘how’ they can change. They don’t see the benefits to changing their small point of view- the day the blog traffic went nuts, only to have the next day go the complete opposite direction.

What are the benefits to thinking about a big picture plan and not a small picture?

1) Your mental health:

If you are worried about how much money you make per day, or per hour right at the beginning you will stress yourself out.  Not everything you write will make money, or will go viral.  Thinking big picture allows you to see that one blog post does not make a blog.  Money comes from various sources, and it’s critical to see this.

Your mental health needs a moment.  When you aren’t seeing daily drops or daily spikes in anything, you will be more realistic in your writing.  If one day of editing didn’t work, you can still see there is more days before a book has to be published.

2) You don’t think like a day trader when it comes to money:

You have to have a book published, you have to monetize your blog (a highly recommended book is How To Make Money Blogging one which every one of the team here at Living a Life of Writing have read.) You to learn SEO or this will all fail.  That doesn’t sound like a happy writer. That sounds like a writer on the verge of burnout.  Burnout isn’t pretty.

If you worry about money, and you only look at one day, you won’t see what is working for your books or your blogs.  It only seeing overall trends that can help a writer.  If a blog is ten years old, but it is only now hitting its stride, but it was only the last two years which made the difference, it is time to see the big picture.

3) You can change direction faster but with more confidence:

Life changes things, or more specifically life will change for everyone at some point.  There isn’t a time when small events happen, but if you’re thinking of how many blog posts you need to write in a day, or how much social networking needs to be done, you won’t be able to focus.

You have to have some fun in your business, otherwise what is the reason you are blogging or writing a book for?

If you have to change direction and if you are thinking of the big picture, you can feel far more confident in knowing you’ve got all the information, and you can still be sure it’s the best one for your career as a writer. We all want to ‘live, life, write’ (pardon the pun) but if you can’t see the big picture, or even know if the direction you are heading is the right one, your change in direction might be fast, but it won’t leave you feeling confident.

Changing your small picture plans isn’t easy- but it’s worth it in the long term.