As I think I’ve mentioned here before I am the very appreciative recipient of a four-book contract with Manor House Publishing. As a writer, there is probably no greater thrill than to be traditionally published and I am really grateful to Manor House for taking a chance on me initially, and then sticking with me for the long haul.

Since my first novel, Shades of Teale came out in 2011, I have also written Passages to Epiphany (a book about awakenings, published in 2012) and The Write Way, a book about how to write well, which came out in 2013. Then I took 2014 off.

I had started working on a novel late last year to fulfill my four-book contract and I got about 15,000 words into a fairy tale that I was enjoying very much. But a conversation with my publisher changed the course of things to come: as it turns out, Manor House doesn’t want a novel after all, they want a book about content marketing. I’ve spent years developing my expertise in this area and it’s a blinding flash of the obvious that I should write a book about it.

I was surprised but really pleased – although a novel would satisfy the creative beast inside me a book about content marketing would be great from the perspective of promoting my business. I provide content marketing programs to manufacturing businesses and it’s an area that is often poorly understand and greatly underestimated.

My team and I create content marketing strategies and execute them and they involve blogging, newsletters, email marketing campaigns, social media management and content creation and curation. It’s really fun and very challenging at the same time. So a book that speaks to our expertise would be fabulous.

But like everybody else in business, I don’t have really have time to write a book. So now that I have my outline developed, I’m going to have to be creative. Here’s what I’m going to do to hit my July 31st deadline:

1. Repurpose other content. I’ve been blogging about content marketing for several years now and I have also given a number of talks and run workshops about how to succeed at it. I’ve taught an online course with my fellow content marketing aficionado, Tom Gray, of Gray eMarketing Solutions in Denver Colorado. And in the process of doing all of that, I’ve developed a large archive of content that I can revisit for the purposes of including it in my new book.
2. Blog my content. I have a great outline ready and waiting and now that I know what needs to go into my new book it will be a fairly simple matter to further chunk it into smaller sections that I can prepare for the initial purpose of sharing on my blog. My publisher wants me to write a book with about 50,000 words in it and I estimate that I have already created about 15,000. So that means I have to develop another 35,000 words and I have 32 weeks in which to do it. At a rate of about 1100 words of new content every week, I will hit my target. I consider 1,100 words too long for a typical blog post, however; but 550 is a great length. So my plan is to write the required 1,100 words weekly so I can hit my deadline, and then post the material to my blog in 500-word chunks. I should have lots of extra blog posts to take me out to the end of 2015.
3. Get up earlier. I’m already an early riser but I’m going to turn the clock back an extra half hour every week day to get me out of bed at 4:30. That will give me some extra time at my computer that is entirely dedicated to my book. It maybe sounds extreme. But when I want something badly enough, I will do whatever it takes to make it happen. When it comes to writing my fourth book, I am Pumped! And very, very determined.

If you’d like to know more about how I can help you eliminate any anxiety you may be experiencing around your business’s online presence, please get in touch and let’s talk about how me and my team can help you. You can email me at susan@crossmancommunications.com or book time directly through my calendar at www.meetme.so/susancrossman. And good luck for great writing!