I am currently reading (and almost finished with) Erin Brenner’s The Chicago Guide for Freelance Editors and have been doing a lot of deep thinking about my editing and, by extension my writing. Admin tasks eat up a lot of my time, and there are a lot of tools out there that could be used just as powerfully by authors as by editors, so I wanted to discuss some of the things I am applying to my business that could be useful to yours.
If you don’t know what “admin tasks” are, they’re things like answering emails, updating your website copy, scheduling social media posts, writing and recording my blog, setting up my newsletter, and so on. Also things like time tracking, handling finances, and all those fun activities.
Authors are often focused like a laser on their writing (understandably). Writing is our bread and butter and is really the thing we want to be doing. The rest of that is just irksome. And yet it’s so necessary.
Full confession here, my administrative side of things has been severely lacking for years. Now that things are shifting in my career, I have discovered weak spots in my process that I have to address. That’s just a fact. As such, I am hoping to spare you some of the frustrations I have personally experienced.
What’s your admin process?
This is something I’m working on uncovering. At the moment, I have it that Mondays are my admin day. They are the day I write/record my podcast, set up my weekly marketing posts to social media outlets, do my scheduling and arranging for the week, and so on. It’s the day I try and get all of that done so the rest of the five-day work week (so four days) are focused on writing or editing.
However, during the week I still need to do things like check my email. Rather than leaving it open all day, I actually check it once in the morning, once around lunchtime, and then once before close of day unless I am really looking for something specific. I also have filters for certain emails to get sorted into folders like “newsletters” or “client communication” and have certain things that aren’t straight up SPAM set to auto-delete (like notifications from Wordpress that my plugins have updated).
In addition to that, I have a physical to-do list that I keep on my desk that I write things into at the end of the work day so that I can push things around as needed. Some of the advice I really liked out of Erin’s book was, “always leave room for two more things.” That really struck home for me because—like so many of us—I have a habit of over-scheduling myself and resulting in misery. It make things far more difficult than they ought to be, and I end up feeling like I’m always behind.
Erin’s suggestion of leaving room for “two more things” means that when something inevitably takes longer than expected, there’s room in my day for it rather than constantly being in “catch up mode.”
Also, thanks to Erin, I have started exploring things like text expander software (it lets me type a command and spits out a pre-written chunk of text; useful for things like comments I make over and over in manuscripts, like: “You've switched POVs here! Double check the character POV. :)”
The one I use is called “Beeftext” and is a free, open-source software. I also use an open source Asana/Monday style project management software called “Focalboard.” Having things listed out there for me lets me remember what I need to do. I also recently started reorganizing my file structure to be much easier and intend on continuing to do so. I’ve been working on all this today (as I write this, so 8/19). Getting everything put in there and set up takes time. All of this takes time. However, after it’s initialized, the point is that it will take dramatically less time later.
An ounce of prevention vs. a pound of cure.
Why is having a system important?
Look, I have ADHD and autism. My life is chaos, and I keep trying to tell myself that I like it that way. Unfortunately, as much as I might find the chaos slightly simpler because I don’t need to put work into it, it doesn’t actually hold up when stress happens. Such as having a fully booked schedule since June with speaking engagements coming up.
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits said very correctly, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” If you create a system and have a strong one in place, you will discover you can lean into that system when things get difficult. If you are sick and not thinking clearly, your system will be the thing you rely on to get through the day.
As an autistic person, systems are my jam. I love systems. I also absolutely rely on them because, frankly, it’s the only way I can function. I have a system for going to bed; I have a system for self-care and grooming; I have a system for… You get my point. Even if you aren’t autistic, you have systems in place for your life that you rely on and follow even if you aren’t always aware of them. (Having a hook by the door you always hang your keys on is a system.)
Your systems are also going to be highly individualized, so you need to play with things that work for your mind and experience.
What tools exist for authors?
I do not have an exhaustive list of all the tools that you could utilize, so I am going to broadly talk about a few categories of tools you can implement that are hopefully system-agnostic as far as computers go.
Email Filters
This is a big one. My inbox is very, very busy. I am subscribed to a number of newsletters and mailing lists for various organizations, I have clients contacting me about various subjects, and I have different notifications coming from locations (like Substack letting me know I posted a blog).
While I’m still developing my email filters, having them has been a huge help. I have a few folders that my email automatically gets dumped into: client communications, newsletters, marketing emails, EFA communications, and author events. I use individual emails to filter specific senders (like the EFA) and send it to the correct place so I can check things at my leisure. I also use subject line filters for things like my Wordpress “we’ve updated” notifications. I don’t care much if something has successfully updated, but if something has not updated properly, I need to know. So I filter out the successful emails but leave the “plugins have failed to update” emails.
Filtering your emails can help you with inbox overwhelm, too. It’s easy to look at your inbox and feel an immediate “fight or flight” reaction when you have too many unread emails that you haven’t dealt with. Also, setting this up can help ensure you don’t miss anything important because if the inbox is being sorted appropriately, you are less likely to run into issues of missing an important message surrounded by newsletter material you may or may not read.
Project Management Software
Most of the time when authors are looking for organizational software, they mean for things like their books (at which point I recommend Plottr). However, since we’re talking about administrative tasks—and these also can work brilliantly for publishing flow of work—this software can be powerful in making sure you aren’t missing vital steps or to-do tasks.
While my daily to-do is written by hand, I have a “master list” on my software that reminds me what I need to do every week, every day, etc. These are things explicitly related to my work, too, so I’m not including “go grocery shopping.” It’s things like:
Daily
Check email
Create to-do for tomorrow
Catalogue time in Clockify
These are all things I have to do daily in my “work day,” and listing them out is useful. Also, Erin pointed out the very useful note that these systems existing also means that if you get sick, other people can pick up for you and know what tasks need doing.
Keeping everything in your head at all times is a recipe for disaster if you become ill or if you have memory that sometimes likes to go on the fritz. It’s better to offload all that stuff into software like Focalboard, Asana, Todoist, or whatever works for you. Pulling it all out of yourself means you can just glance at your reference if you’re having a rough time. Remember, “we fall to the level of our systems” is a very real situation for humans, so putting things together in a way that is accessible for you is important.
These lists should include things you do quarterly and yearly, too, like paying business taxes or doing a sit-down to see where you are with finances. Those are extremely important and need to be regularly accounted for, so pop those onto your boards. How you set up these resources is wholly up to you, though, so stick with things that work for your brain.
Here’s an example of my spread:
AI Tools
Before you get your hackles up, I am not suggesting you use AI to write your novel or generate images for you. These tools are functional tools for tasks like emails. I, myself, use Goblin.Tools as a way to check out my emails before I send them to make sure the tone is correct.
However, AI can also be used to collate data in ways that are tough for humans. You could feed it sales numbers and have it come up with information, same with “cost per click” analysis of ads and other such things. You can utilize the power of machine intelligence to remove some of the more complex and miserable elements of your work. These things aren’t a replacement for human ingenuity, but using them to perform tasks like data analysis is a very helpful tool.
You can also use tools like Grammarly to help write emails faster if you’re doing something like writing a pitch or querying or even a newsletter. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t write it yourself, but you can absolutely use AI to help grammar check it (because who hasn’t sent an email with an embarrassing typo?).
Futurepedia has a massive list of AI tools that are pretty well organized if you want to take a meander through there and see what’s out there. Again, though, I personally don’t advocate for using them to generate images (other than for your own reference or to give to an actual artist as a reference for an idea) or to do any serious writing for you. Using it to help with some SEO or something? Not a terrible plan. However, I still strongly advise you to work with an actual human whenever possible.
Author Assistants
A personal assistant can do things like scheduling social media posts, sorting email if necessary, or helping with other admin tasks you don’t want to do. They don’t have to be extremely expensive, either. You can hire a teenager for some pocket money to help you with some of it if you feel inclined. I wouldn’t give that teenager unfettered access to the internals of my business, but giving them ability to schedule posts? If they’re trustworthy and not writing it themself (just using my writing) then it wouldn’t be a bad bet.
There are professionals, too, who can do everything from helping you compose social media posts to handling responding to inquiries about things you’re doing. All of those things can be of significant value, so they may be worth the money and energy to employ.
Time Tracking
Even if you aren’t charging by the hour as an author, tracking the time you put into certain elements of your business is still important. You can see trends, identify things you spend far too much time on, and so on. Myself, I use a program called “Clockify.” It has an incredible free version that does everything I need and allows me to automatically track what I’m doing. It runs in the background and says how much time I spend on what. At the end of the day, I go through my activity and sort it out by project and client and task, and it creates useful reports. I also track my “distracted time” so I know when I’ve wandered off task and what those distractions were (and how to minimize them).
You can also use software like “Sukha” to do things like handle sprints and focus time. It’s excellent for that. It also has some limited tracking capability, last I knew, and it at the very least can have a task list where you can track what you’re working on and roughly how long it took.
Clockify works better for my needs because it allows me to attach things to client invoices, but Sukha is far better for focused time and sprints, so I think that may be the one I’d guide authors to more frequently than Clockify unless you really need the “minute-by-minute” tracking of exactly what you’re doing on your computer.
That sounds like so much…
Okay, real talk here. I didn’t really get into developing systems like I mention above until very recently, and I regret it. The thing is, as your career continues, you will discover you are fighting against real life and a million other problems. Furthermore, if you want to be a big time author, you are going to need to prepare for that.
Laying the ground work and putting systems into place when you are small will save you as you grow. You can expand those systems rather than, for example, trying to create a system while juggling four speaking engagements, back-to-back clients, and trying to publish two books. (Cough.)
The more work and preparation you put in, in advance, the better off you will be when the deluge happens. It’s like digging irrigation trenches before you plant or, better yet, having gulleys and infrastructure in place so that when the torrent does come, it won’t wash the whole town away with it.
The good news is, also, you can implement things a piece at a time. Start with just one thing and explore it. Play with the options, poke around some different trial periods on software (or explore open source options) and see what systems work best for you. You don’t need to do all of this at once.
Heck, for some of you, you might not need any of this at all just yet. However, knowing it exists and what you might use it for once you reach a place in your career where it becomes germane is valuable information. If nothing else, play with some things and take notes that you keep somewhere for later.
It will also be far less overwhelming if you start the journey early on rather than trying to undertake it later and apply things retroactively. Implementing things when you’re first building new habits is way easier than trying to work against old ones and create a new system when you’ve got something established. Even if the established system is garbage.
Ask me how I know. /sigh
Author Systems and Administration