Avoidance Tactics (Cecilia Peartree)

 I'm not sure whether I've been writing too much lately and have burnt out, or whether this always happens in the summer - maybe I have a sort of vague memory of long school holidays at this time of year. It would certainly be nice to spend a month at the seaside as we sometimes did when I was a child. This year we will be lucky to get away for a planned long weekend in Llandudno, which is at least by the sea as well as having a lovely long promenade for walking. Unfortunately our journey there relies on all four trains we have to catch being present and more or less correct at the right times. That's four trains there and another four back, by the way. Llandudno must be one of the most difficult places in the country to get to from here. But I mustn't ramble on about trains, tempting though it is.

View from Conwy Castle

No matter what the cause, I am having trouble concentrating on my work in progress. It may be because I've made it too serious and so it isn't entertaining me enough as I go along - that happens sometimes, although because I'm not a naturally serious person, it's a bit unusual. I think it's more likely that I've at last got bored with my own company and need a break from routine. Because I hate housework and don't have the physique for it these days in any case, I can't do that as a break from writing. Likewise, I can't do much gardening at a time before feeling an irresistible urge to sit in a chair for an hour, although I do like gardening and I like even more being able to sit in the conservatory and look out at the results.

In the garden

Perhaps because of all the above, I have recently resorted to a couple of new avoidance tactics, both of which are to do with writing, so that I can do them at my computer screen without too much physical effort, but neither involves very much actual writing.

The first is to engage in a bit of marketing activity, something which I only rarely remember to do and even more rarely enjoy doing. Amazon has tempted me into it by adding something called 'A+ content' to the marketing options available on the KDP desktop. It took me a while, and some input from other writers on a forum to work out what it was for and what to do with it. But after some failed experiments and one that has almost worked to my satisfaction, I've decided I really like it.

What happens is that, if you see the 'A+' button which I don't think everyone does yet as it only seems to be rolling out to indie authors in stages, you can set up extra content for your book pages, where it's displayed under the heading 'From the Publisher'. The content has to be created using templates which are provided once you start the creation process. Some of these contain just images and others allow for image and text, some with sidebars etc. 

Not a very good example of A+ content!

What I plan to use this option for is to offer some extra information to do with the series I write in, and replicate it to all the book pages for the series, which I understand can be done quite easily, though I haven't tried out the replication part myself yet. 

The other new to me avoidance tactic is something I suspect most authors don't use for avoidance but in a much more purposeful way: entering writing competitions. For instance, I didn't really intend to enter the Kindle Storyteller contest this year after a couple of previous attempts, but I managed to finish a novel in time to enter it and suddenly thought 'why not?' I also noticed two short story competitions I thought it would be fun to enter. I feel I may have exhausted the possibilities there, so quite soon now there will be nothing much standing between me and the community centre minutes, not to mention the task of booking a cat-sitter for when we go away. These are two more of the activities I've been avoiding.