5 Steps to Help When You’re Overcommitted

We all love to feel busy. Busy means important. It’s a psychological frame for our own desires to be loved, wanted, and needed. To fit in, to feel connected. 

Being busy isn’t a bad thing (though it’s not a healthy life construct, says the queen of busy-ness…).

Busy-ness is a slippery slope to overcommitment, when being busy turns into a major stressor instead of a way for us to feel connected to the universe around us.

I hit moments every quarter when I’m suddenly, completely, irrevocably overwhelmed by my work. I’m a Yes Girl, and sometimes I agree to too many things, and the next thing I know, fifteen things are due within the same two-week period, and there’s travel and PR and a book due, but I have to take time away from writing to deal with them. These “things” are everything from mentoring to blurbing books to reading for shows to judging contests to PR for book releases. It’s the business of writing. And sometimes, it gets in the way of the creative process. 

None are these things required. Honestly, I could easily shut myself up in my ivory tower and only ever create books. People ask me all the time why I don’t. As they point out, the world isn’t going to stop if I say no. But these are the ways I try to give back to the writing community. It’s how I balance out my karmic debt. 

I use all kinds of tools to dig myself out from my tendency to overcommit: Wunderlist, of course, and my Bullet Journal. But mostly, it’s just me, wandering the house, grumbling to myself about what I need to do, consumed with a baseline panic that I’ll never get it all done. 

I know this is my MO. It happens a lot. My debut year, I co-ran a marketing organization, co-ran a writing blog, judged a massive year-long contest with over 360 books to read, plus wrote two novels and toured 13 states. I had so many balls in the air my balls were juggling balls of their own. (Ahem. See my blog last week...)

I swore I’d never do it again, yet here I am, 12 years later, still overcommitting myself, still juggling. 

Now, I have learned the value of saying NO, and trust me, I use it liberally. I won’t do something if I’m not 100% sure it’s a good fit for me, that it will either make me feel good, or benefit someone I care about. If it doesn’t hit the marks I’ve set, I say no. I also am very careful to say no to things that coincide with my big deadlines. I know myself well enough not to schedule an event, a trip, a bookclub anywhere near a book deadline. That’s when I have to say no to EVERYTHING.

But there are lots of things that meet the yes criteria. So how do I dig myself out? For real, not just grumbling about it?

It’s the old saw - how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. 

First, I admit to myself I’ve gotten in over my head.

Admitting you have a problem propels you toward the action to resolve that problem, whether it’s as simple as overcommitting or as serious as admitting you are depressed, or over-drinking. Admission is the first step to fixing things.

Second, I pull together every single project due over the next few weeks and take a long, hard look.

I prune away things that are part of said overcommitments but cancelling won’t tear a hole in the fabric of the universe. The haircut that can be pushed two weeks, the lunch I said I’d host (90% of my friends are creatives with their own deadlines—they get it). Anything that can be rescheduled without causing heartburn, or outright cancelled altogether, gets the chop.
 

Third, I choose two projects.

Just two. Normally, they’ll be a priority already because of their respective deadline, but sometimes because they’re more cohesive together. And edit and a blurb book, for example. The trick is to allow myself to only focus on two things, believing the rest will be dealt, in the same method. 

Fourth, I start breaking my day into chunks based on the two projects.

Using the blurb book and edit examples again, my day looks like this:

10:00 am – 12:30pm: read the blurb book
1:00 pm – 3:00 pm: work on my edits
3:00 pm: take a walk, clear my head, do some yoga
3:30 pm–5:00 pm: work on edits
5:00 pm–6:00 pm: deal with business, including PR, social media, etc. that must be handled, more exercise
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm: prep and eat dinner
8:00 pm – 10:00 pm: read some more

Fifth, and this is the most important step — finish.

Finishing is important. Write the blurb. Send off the edit. Then and only then will I tackle the next two projects. 

If I stick to this program, within a week or so, most of the commitments are dealt with and I’m left with only my own work again. The space that creates brings harmony. With harmony, I swear never to get myself overcommitted again. 

This method really does help whenever you’re feeling out of control. Note the twice-a-day exercise slots, too. When I’m feeling exceptionally frazzled, a walk, some stretching, anything grounding really helps. If I’m in truly dire straights, I will take something to help me focus, but I avoid that at all costs.  Most of the time, a cup of tea and some deep breaths whilst petting a kitten works just as well as a pill. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, a timer is about to go off in the kitchen, and I have some plates to fill!

What’s your favorite trick for dealing with overcommitment?

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Did you watch a good show or movie over the weekend?

Hello, chickens. I hope y'all had a lovely weekend, that you were able to get outside and enjoy some spring sunshine.

This week I finished up the last big edits to TEAR ME APART. After this it goes to the proofreaders, then to the printer, then to... you! This is the most nerve-wracking part of publishing, polishing and shining until the story gleams, trying to scrub out any imperfections. I want to give you the best book I can, thus all the fine-tooth combing before it reaches your hands.

Add in writing for Brit #6, and it's been a full week here at Chez Ellison!

You know what's great after lots of work? TV. Movies. Time to glaze over in front of a screen. And I'm in the mood for a new show.

Did you watch anything good over the weekend? Let me know in the comments!

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Sunday Smatterings

Welcome to Sunday, gentle readers. Time to grab some tea, kick up your feet, and lazily read my favorite reads of the week.

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Here's what happened on the Internets this week:

15 of the best Shakespeare tattoos. Which one is your favorite? I'm partial to #2, myself.
 

How to Make a Fruitfly Orgasm. Most interesting headline of the week, for sure...
 

This Joan Didion essay will change the way you think about keeping a journal. "Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether..."
 

"Ask Benedict to say the word 'penguin.' " Oh my, this is priceless. I love a man who can laugh at himself!
 

Time management Monday: Just Don’t Do It. Fabulous advice. This is how I prune my To Do lists.
 

The best method for cooking asparagus is 2000 years old. If it ain't broke...
 

Advice to writers: You can't write what you wouldn't read. Brilliant advice from Queen Nora.

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And closer to home:

The LIE TO ME ebook is only $2.99 until tomorrow! Dirt cheap, y'all—less than a latte, and maybe provides a little more adrenaline.

10 of you can win a copy of THE SIXTH DAY from Shelf Awareness! Throw your hat in the ring on this one. 

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That's it from me. Y'all give a treat to the neighborhood cat, send a just-because card to a friend, and we'll talk again soon.

xo,
J.T.

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It's Indie Bookstore Day! Here's Why I Love Mine.

Happy Indie Bookstore Day! I hope you celebrate by visiting your local bookseller and finding your next great read. 

I originally posted this in 2016, but it still holds up. I'm so proud and pleased that Parnassus is an even bigger part of Nashville's literary community today.

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A few nights ago, I attended a signing at the wonderful Parnassus Books in Nashville.

The signing author was Ariel Lawhon, who was launching her brilliant story chronicling the doomed flight of the Hindenburg, FLIGHT OF DREAMS. As Ariel and I hugged and kissed hello, bookseller extraordinaire Bill Long-Innes smiled benevolently and asked, “Do you guys have a writer tribe? It seems like Nashville authors really make an effort to support one another. I wonder if any other cities have such a tight knit group?”

Ariel and I nodded.

Because we do have a tribe here in Nashville.

Our literary community, dubbed the Nashville Literati, is tight. There are cliques within it—young adult writers in the SCBWI, crime fiction in Sisters in Crime, romance writers in MCWR, literary authors big with Salon 615 and Humanities Tennessee and The Porch Writers’ Collective.

But when it comes to supporting another author, we cross genres like a boss.

We lunch together. We attend each other’s signings. We hang out in East Nashville at East Side Storytellin’. We pull together all our writing buddies when a writer friend comes to town. We even go on writing retreats together.

And now one constant we all have in common is our indie store, Parnassus.

I think the store’s staff has made it such a welcoming, open place for writers of all genres, of all stripes, that we can’t help but want to gather there.  

When our beloved former indie, Davis-Kidd, closed its doors in 2010 (and Parnassus didn’t yet exist), it suddenly became much harder to get everyone together. We have the annual Southern Festival of Books, which is always well-represented with local authors. We did lunches and cocktails, drove out to other counties to attend signings.

But not having an indie store that represented and celebrated all the writers in town was hard. A town without an indie store is a sad one indeed.

Davis-Kidd had a long history in this town. As a matter of fact, it was one of the reasons I was okay with moving here. When my then boyfriend (now husband) brought me to Nashville in 1993 to meet his parents, he drove me around, and our last stop was Davis-Kidd. “See?” he said. “This is the best bookstore in town. You’ll have plenty to read if we ever move here.”

(I’m not sure if I was more entranced by the idea of books—books!—or the fact that my boyfriend had just hinted strongly he wanted a long future with me.) 

Davis-Kidd was everything you could ask for in a bookstore: great staff, great events, a huge, diverse collection of titles. I attended my very first author signing there (John Connolly! My writing hero!). At that signing, I met a woman who became my other mother, who mentored me through years of writing, getting an agent, getting a deal. I did one of my first signings at David-Kidd. I hit my first bestseller list while I was launching my fourth book there. I attended Sisters in Crime meetings there. I wept with everyone else when it closed.

To have an indie in our midst again is incredible.

It’s been very fun to watch Parnassus take hold in our community, to see stories being made there. The Nashville Literati grows stronger day-by-day, with new writers coming up to join the established ones. And Parnassus is our hub. Several writers are booksellers there (And one co-owns it. You might have heard of her . . . her name is Ann.). This lends a verisimilitude unmatched anywhere else.

Yes, Nashville has a writer tribe, just as strong as Chicago, New York, and L.A.

And thanks to our favorite indie, we have a place to call our own, too.

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What are you reading this weekend?

We did it – we got through the week and made it all the way to Friday! 🎉

What are y'all reading this weekend? Let's talk about it in the comments.

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