How I Get Shit Done
Your most valuable asset is your time.
I’m going to give you the keys to my castle — I’m not sure it’ll work for you, but in case it does, here goes!
Someone who doesn’t know me (or what I’m capable of) would think that my life is sheer chaos, and spinning wheels and frantic hyperfixation (yes) after months of procrastination (no).
But basically — I’ve always got three things in the hopper.
Something Fun and Delicious To Do (AI helps with this LIKE WHOA, because so much of AI use IS fun)
Something I Need To Do (like write books, ship books, etc)
Broccoli. (Which I love, but which enough people don’t it’s worth the metaphor.)
By virtue of always having three pots on the stove, there’s always something I can be doing to further my career at any moment of any given day — and, based on the priority of the thing, or my energy level, I can hop from thing to thing and knock stuff off my massive ToDo list with relative ease.
Like, setting up my California Resellers permit the other day. SUPER BROCCOLI TASK. I’d been putting it off for months. But, I waited till I had to do it (because I’m ordering several thousand dollars worth of packing material for my incoming books) and until I had the time and energy to do it — thus, it got done.
If I’m watching TV at night w/my husband, I’m very frequently rolling art, or trying out new programs, or dicking around with Jack — like, I anticipate doing a ton of work on The House’s visual novel this upcoming week — or an upcoming German cover for AITA, or Nightshifted, or, Her Future Vampire Lover — while we polish off the last season of the Ozarks. It doesn’t take a lot of active attention (or AI supervision) to create art or prompts and then I can get a feel for where I really want to go with a thing while seeing what trouble Jason Bateman gets into this episode. (Ruth is my FAVORITE I LOVE HER.)
Things that I need to do, every day, like ship books or writing, generally get priority brain time.
I usually do all my shipping stuff in the morning, so it’s done, and then for writing I work best in the afternoon (after a nap) or sometimes at night (with headphones onto ocean sounds while Paul plays a game).
And…that’s pretty much it. There’s no super secret sauce. It’s just that I’ve got a rolling ToDo list a million miles long, and any time I want to feel like I’m Doing Something I look at it and see what it is I have the energy & time to do at that moment.
Wait, I lied, there is a super secret sauce — actually several of them, so let’s break them into headers below:
Priveledge
It’s important to acknowledge that I have priveledge like whoa — a supportive husband, no kids, we doordash 80% of our meals, we have gardeners, a housecleaner, and we use a laundry service. (This last one is the most fucking bougie, but going from “I can’t see one couch with all the laundry it has on it” to bags of folded clothing returning to us was like fairy-magic.)
I also have the TT, IG, and FB ads girls, my German translator, plus a main PA and a helper-outer PA. (More on this in a bit.)
I also still have a day job.
I have folded my entire life around making it possible for me to do this one thing that I love more than any other (than Paul and the cats).
I didn’t always have the luxury of this — I’ve been intentionally building toward it for quite some time. I didn’t launch out of the gate knowing shit either. (I’ve been doing some version of this since 1998.) So what helps free up the time for me might not be available to you…yet.
(Honestly tho, if your partner doesn’t support your writing career, throw them back into the sea. I had one of those partners once, and it’s SO much easier to create when someone wants you to succeed.)
I Know How I Work
Becca Syme’s Cliffton strengths for authors helped with this like WHOA. As someone who is high stragetic, I used to pound my head into the wall (metaphorically) while staring out a window trying to figure out why my story was going East, when I’d planned for it to go West THE ENTIRE TIME.
But I learned that basically, sometimes if I’m not in the mood to write, it’s because if I force it, I’d be writing the wrong thing, and my hindbrain isn’t done chewing things out yet.
I know this, because I’ve written several million words over the course of my lifetime, and I know how to trust my books and my plot and my internal story-o-meter.
That shit just comes with time. Keep going. But realize that the thing inside you where the story lives is always right, and it usually wants whats best for you.
I Ignore Reality
This is separate from priveledge, although it’s often a part of it, but….
About two years ago I saw this amazing quote somewhere on the internet: “To worry is to suffer twice”…and boy howdy did that apply to me.
I ran myself into the ground as a covid nurse, trying to save myself, my loved ones, and the world, and while it did have some small effect on people…it also hurt me, bad. Really really bad. (PTSD, SI, etc etc etc.)
So, while I acknowledge that the polticial situation in the US right now is super fucked — I also know that it’s outside of my control, by and large.
I feel like I gave at the office, from 2020-2023. (And if anyone wants me to do emotional labor AT work I’m inclined to ask them for another $30/hr, heh.)
It’s just not worth me, personally, in the position that I know I am very, very lucky to be in, worrying about what’s happening, when I don’t have the opportunity to affect much change.
Which isn’t to say that I don’t vote, or support causes (or support my husband, who works at a disability rights non profit.)
It’s just that I know it’s personally unhealthy for me to wade into news and the internet as a whole, which brings us to….
I Ignore Social Media Almost Compeltely
Look, if I love someone, I’m gonna have their birthday in my calendar. I don’t need Facebook to tell me. And if a party gets announced there, eventually your friends learn that they need to msg you separately, if they want you to attend.
I don’t just sit and scroll.
Ever.
EVER.
I had to train myself out of that at the end of covid times — and actually, that was one of the most brilliant things about MJ, is instead of scrolling twitter to find out what new and thrilling way my Government wanted to fuck me, instead at night I just started rolling images and going to sleep easier.
I don’t visit news sites. I don’t hang out on IG or TT or YT — sure, I scan them a little bit, every once in awhile — but part of the reason I *pay* my TT, FB ads, and IG girls is not just for content creation and posting, but for THEM to scroll and keep on top of trends for me, and tell me what I NEED to be doing for them to make their stuff work.
Yeah, I could theoretically make/keep more money if I automated all of that shit (somehow???) and did it all myself (ughhhhh) — but do you have any idea the timesink it would be to keep up on all three platforms?
Nah, bra, I ain’t got time for that.
If something’s fucked up enough that someone mentions it in a group chat or a discord I hang out in, then voila, I know it’s happening. Or, sometimes my husband catches me up on the news when I’m driving him home at the end of the day.
But by and large — if I start to scroll, my stomach actually starts to feel sick, because my brain KNOWS that’s not healthy for me (so much of my former scrolling habits being directly related to covid nursing) and I just hop out of the app or tab and walk away.
A lot of it though comes down to the fact that I like to work. I’ve always had hustle, it’s just how I am.
A lot of people might feel threatened by all the irons I’ve got in the fire, and/or my ToDo list…where I just think I’m addicted to knocking stuff off of it. And if something’s too hard, or I’m too tired, or whatever, there’s always some other sliver of a thing I can get done!
Since my first retro project looked SO GREAT last night, and I was exhausted after flying home from my retreat, I started kicking around ideas for Her Future Vampire Lover (another older book of mine, which OFC is gonna be the next to get the treatment, w/that title!) and these came up:
Honestly I was almost depressed how easy these covers came out — work flow was I gave Jack the book and asked him for the Ideogram prompt for it, btw —
I was like, “Man, if I get the perfect image 3 rolls in, that’s no FUN, lol”
I actually REALLY like this last one!
Now — MIND YOU — I could absolutely delegate this (and I will the subsequent pieces of it, to get the full wrap and the foil and maybe a different text thingy later, when I get to my final one) — but — I wanna eat some of the cotton candy too! And I don’t mind doing fun stuff so I should reward my brain as often as I can with it.
And then this morning before the gym I was all, “Hey Jack, help me out making an image design for some custom tissue paper?”
And we got this going:
And then after the gym I prioritized clearing out my garage and emailing a moving service, in the hopes that they’ll help me take some things to the dump and…now I’m writing this!
That whole adage about “How do you eat an elephant?” “One bite at a time” — is entirely true.
I just happen to have three elephants going at any moment, and some of them taste better than the others ;)
xo!
Cassie =