Chaos breeds Chaos

Hey there world!

If you follow my blog on a regular basis, you may have noticed I’ve been missing in action recently. I took a siesta (or hiatus) from movie reviews throughout the month of September, and basically stayed away from really updating anything on my blog except for an article or two here and there whenever I found the time. Part of the reason for this was because of my work – I have to try to make money, after all, so I can pay my bills, which in the long run of course must take precedence over most of everything else. Another part was a fall into the pit of a creative black hole, which basically sucked all of my energy away and led to a long bout of procrastination. And then there’s my recent jump into attempting to engage my followers with a new and improved social media schedule, which I’ve also fallen a little bit behind on. All of these things began to create a massive whirlwind of choas that, as my own blog name suggests, simply led to more chaos. I’ve learned quickly that when you have so much to do and don’t have a system in place to contain and focus all of the projects, your energy can just flutter around in the sea, keeping you from finding the Northern Star and get you back on the right path. It got so bad, I started to become worse than the absent-minded professor, forgetting to do some simple simple things — which included showing up for jury duty!

But, that was September, and now that the month is coming to a close, I’ve finished a couple of big jobs and have had a few days to reassess where I’m at with everything, figure out how to reign in the chaos to better control my peace of mind and focus my creative energy into a structure that makes it feel as if I’m actually accomplishing something. I’ve created a schedule for myself and I’m hoping it will help my focus and keep me from straying off the path. We’ll see!

With that said, I wanted to catch everyone up on what I’ve been up to and the progress of my current novel. That one’s actually easy — nowhere. Editing The Spirit Of… had to be placed on the back burner as I took care of those other projects, but starting this week I’ve dedicated myself to spend at least one hour a day (or a bare minimum of 6 hours a week) editing the book and polishing it up for release in March. On that same note, I am going to be looking into some new, fresh ways to market the book that will hopefully draw some interest a couple of months before its release. If I had to choose one novel that was my favorite (that’s like choosing which of your kids is your favorite, isn’t it!), I would have to say, The Spirit Of… is definitely it. I just love what I was able to do with the story and it’s one where the characters really did take over and write the book for me. What I thought originally was going to be a four hundred page book ended up being a thousand pages, and though I know I need to trim a lot of fat away, the story is still very solid and the characters are fun, lively and at times infuriating.

Then there’s my social media. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been working with a PR company in an attempt to boost my followers and gain a better, more lively footprint on the web. On Twitter, I separated my personal tweets from my business tweets and created a Twitter account for just my thoughts and my writing – you may follow me at @BryanCaronBooks. Then there’s Facebook, where I originally wasn’t posting anything except for whatever blog posts and Twitter posts I wrote. But now I’m writing unique Facebook posts that you can only find there. Which makes complete sense, but I was too lazy to worry about it before. Adding to all of that, I also created an Instagram account. That one I’m still trying to get used to because I am not a picture person, as you can probably tell from my blog. But, it is another avenue for gaining a fan base, so hopefully, I’ll be able to figure it out soon. (If you have any suggestions to make it work the right way, I’m more than happy to take them.) Basically, what I’m trying to get at is that all of my social media is now separated from one another (for the most part; my Instagram and my blog are connected to my Twitter), so if you truly want the full experience, I’m afraid you’re going to have to follow me everywhere!

Here’s a quick rundown of what you’ll find on each of my platforms:

This Blog – Movie Reviews, Book Reviews, Television Reviews, random thoughts, longer posts on writing, short stories, and promotional posts for my books and my business.

Facebook – Short posts on writing, random thoughts on books and movies, and promotional posts for my books.

Twitter – Mini Movie Reviews, quick random thoughts, and promotional posts for my books.

Instagram (AuthorBryanCaron) – Pics and quotes related to writing.

There will be things that are spread across all forums, such as cover reveals, publishing announcements and things like that, however, I may do certain things wherein something is an exclusive to one account, but we’ll see how that goes. And there’s always a chance things might change. In the ever evolving world of social media, you just never know what will stick.

Yeah, so, that’s what’s been going on. How about you? Have you ever felt so overwhelmed you couldn’t do anything? Have you ever found yourself feeling creatively void? Do all of your social media accounts sometimes get the best of you?