Mind Palace Publishing

I didn’t start writing because I had spare time. I’m not sure anyone does anymore.

My days already belong to a lot of people. There are my patients, my children that expect to see my face at all their practices. There’s my martial arts training that requires focus to keep my skills sharp, and my church that requests hours of service every week.

Blood Memories started as a conversation around the dinner table with my kids. My wife was the one who said my stories should become a novel. She was right. What neither of us fully understood was that finishing my book was only half the job.

The job behind the job

Here’s what nobody talks about in how to become an author. Once the book exists, you also become a marketer, an influencer, a video editor, a newsletter writer, and a part-time student of whatever the algorithm each social media platform wants this month.

Readers have to find you, and you need to use different methods to get your book in front of people. That means posting. Instagram wants Reels. TikTok wants your face and a hook in the first second. Facebook wants conversation. Your newsletter wants consistency. Substack wants Notes. Each platform suggests that if you just participated a little bit more, everything would take off. And this doesn’t include paid ads on top of everything.

The attention economy has no off switch. That’s the trap. Writing a book has an end. Promotion doesn’t.

I’ve felt the pull. You check how a post did, then check again. You start drafting posts for next week when you were supposed to work on your new chapters. And then that’s when you feel like that new book gets stuck in limbo with no end in sight. That’s how burnout sneaks up on writers: not from writing too much, but from doing everything except the writing.

So I had to create practical steps to keep my creativity flowing. These are the habits that keep me writing alongside everything else.

1. Protect the work first. Social media and marketing gets what’s left.

Remember the purpose of the posts and marketing are sharing your writing. That takes priority. A post lasts a day. Your book lasts forever. So the writing gets the first slot on my calendar, even if that slot is small, and marketing gets whatever comes after.

That may mean on busy days, you go dark on your posts. Social media feeds will forgive you. An abandoned draft is much harder to come back to.

2. Write in small windows, a book is written line by line.

I used to think I needed a free afternoon to write nonstop. Free afternoons don’t exist in my life, so for a while I barely wrote.

Instead I create small windows to write. I usually schedule 1 hour per day in my calendar, which has meant waking an hour earlier in the morning. The trick is lowering the bar to start, not to finish. Before I close a writing session, I leave myself one sentence about what happens next, so the next window starts with momentum from the day before.

Small windows add up line by line.

3. Batch the marketing

Switching between writing and marketing is an unseen mental tax. Jumping from writing a chapter to writing a post burns more energy than any one of those tasks would on its own.

So I batch. One block is scheduled out for planning the week’s posts while I’m in that mindset. The rest of the week, I’m not “doing marketing.” I’m posting things that are already done.

4. Let systems carry the repeat work

If you’re doing the same task every week, create templates for post formats. A simple rotation, like a book teaser one day, behind-the-scenes another, a reader invitation another. A welcome email that sends itself to new subscribers. A website that every post points back to.

Systems aren’t glamorous, but they keep posts flowing on the weeks when life gets busy. And there will be those weeks.

5. Reuse one idea everywhere

One idea can become a newsletter, a Note, a short video, and a caption. You don’t need four ideas for four platforms. You need one good idea told four ways. Readers following you in more than one place won’t mind. Most of them only catch one version anyway.

6. Decide what “enough” looks like before you start

Since the algorithm will never tell you you’ve done enough, you have to decide for yourself. Pick a number of posts per week you can sustain. Hit it. Stop. Checking stats three times a day doesn’t change them; it just takes the attention you could have given your next chapter.

7. Show up in person, not as an advertisement

The self-promotion part felt the most unnatural to me. I like telling stories. I don’t like saying “buy my book.”

Let people know you’re a real person. Talk about what you’re reading. Share what life has taught you. Share what you’re struggling with. When you do mention the book, it lands like a friend’s recommendation.

What Malcolm taught me about this

In Blood Memories, Malcolm absorbs the memories of everyone he feeds on. Their thoughts, passions, and lives flood his mind. The danger isn’t any single memory. It’s the avalanche of thoughts filling his head. If he lets every voice control his head, there’s nothing left of him in the mix.

I didn’t plan it as a metaphor for modern writing, but it works as one. Every social media platform, every new piece of marketing advice is another voice in your head. Some of it is useful. All of it is loud. The job is to keep one voice in charge, and that voice should be the one writing the book.

If you’re juggling too

If you’re writing around a job, a family, caregiving, school, or a body that doesn’t always cooperate, you’re not alone You’re writing the way most writers always have, and that pressure is the birthplace of creativity.

Give yourself permission to let the other voices go quiet so you can choose your true voice you want to follow.

So tell me in the comments: what’s the one thing you’ve cut, or automated, or batched, that gave you back time to write?

(Blood Memories, is out from Mind Palace Publishing. Chapter 1, news, and the VIP Crew are at kckuan.com.)

Originally published on Substack.