What to Focus on: Writing or Marketing?

For years, I have struggled with finding the balance between writing and marketing. If I don't do any marketing (of books or services), I find myself relying almost entirely on word of mouth… and I quickly find myself in a famine season. But if I spend my time focusing on marketing, then no fiction writing gets done… and the only writing that I seem to be able to do is nonfiction.

I often feel like I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.

And depression sets in because the joy of why I'm doing this gets sucked away in the money woes.

But there are a few things that I've recently heard (via podcasts, blogs, and accountability sessions with writing buddies) that have helped me to rationalize these time management woes and helped me to realize that I've never been one to follow the models of others.

I need to stop stressing about certain things, accepting that my brain works differently to others, and focus on what really matters to me.

It's time to give myself permission to embrace a simplistic style to marketing, leaning more into word of mouth and a long-tail to the marketing game.

The Negative Impact of the Quantity Culture

Within the digital era, we seem to have fostered a publishing culture that favors quantity over quality. There are a few writers who somehow manage to produce quality writing at a faster-than-average rate, but with store algorithms encouraging the rapid-release model and with readers refusing to start series until an entire series is out, writers feel this constant pressure to produce quantity, often at the expense of quality.

For someone such as myself, writing rapidly (aiming for the rapid-release model or leaning into any other marketing tactic that relies on quantity to support it) is just a recipe for disaster. To service those marketing tactics, I would need to compromise on my standards completely, producing substandard stories that are nowhere near polished, which I refuse to do.

I have always pursued publishing with a focused goal in mind: to produce a body of work that I can be proud of for years to come. This means ensuring that I write the best stories that I can write to the best of my ability. This includes editing and rewriting in ways that I feel are necessary to make those stories sparkle and shine. But the most important aspect to this is to stay true to my voice and my personal integrity, not compromising my standards for anyone or anything.

This means that I will always favor quality over quantity. But it also means that I fall prey to the small-body-of-work problem for the foreseeable future.

And this small-body-of-work thing also plays into my insecurities in valid ways.

I'm a bloody good developmental editor. I'm the queen of the word-count diet and tightening plots. I understand story structure in ways that others don't, giving me the ability to see story, predicting every twist and turn that will happen within a story, providing insights on how to make those twists happen in surprising (but inevitable) ways.

I'm able to layer stories in complex structures. And I'm able to build believable characters that the reader can empathize with on an emotional level.

These are all skills that I've taken years to develop. And part of that development was to recognize that writing, editing, and rewriting all take time. If I rush the process, the story suffers as a result.

For my own personal publication journey, it's meant that at the time of writing this post, I only have one novel out in the wild. It doesn't matter that I have multiple completed novels sitting in the drawer, including one that is in typesetting phase. But all the public see is the published stuff. And some readers (and writers) refuse to see the process involved in taking a book to market.

Instead, some readers are not keen to take a risk on a writer with only the one novel published (even if that novel is a standalone—deliberately so). And some writers refuse to work with a developmental editor (or writing coach) who doesn't have a body of work of significant size to support the fact that they might actually know what they're doing.

Limited Mental Bandwidth and Finances

One aspect of my situation that frustrates me more than anything is to know that I could have better sales numbers on the current title if I had the finances to pay for a publicist. And the novel that is currently sitting in the drawer in typesetting phase would have been published today (August 14, 2026), with ARC released months ago, if I had the finances to pay for a cover designer (and no, I won't use AI for my covers and I'm not keen on using designers found on Fivver). (All my money went into the copyediting of that novel in the drawer and keeping the business websites operational.)

To get the finances I need, I have two options:

1. Borrow the money from the family, putting the family's finances unnecessarily under pressure, which I refuse to do.
2. Somehow find more clients for the editorial business. To do this requires that I focus efforts on marketing, gobbling up my mental bandwidth.

So, I'm faced with two warring ideas that play on my psyche.

I could focus on marketing my services (and the books already published) and ultimately stop writing fiction because I lack the mental bandwidth to focus on my fictional worlds and the characters living in them. However, this in turn would mean that the first-in-series novel that is next in line to be published would never have its sequels out in the world to support it. However, if I can't publish the stories that I want to tell, then what would be the point?

And hence the damned-if-I-do-damned-if-I-don't feeling.

Which brings me to the conversations that have helped me to right-size the situation a bit better (though I still teeter on the verge of depression because of the money woes).

Focus on What Brings Joy

We only have one life to live.

We only have so much mental bandwidth to go around.

No one has ever had "He didn't earn enough" carved on their gravestone.

It's multiple ways of saying the same thing, but it all comes back to what small pieces of joy we can find in life and living in the moment.

For me, writing is a huge part of my life. My fictional worlds are necessary for my mental stability.

While I use writing to help process my emotions and thoughts (which is what this blog post is), I use my fictional worlds to help me explore what could be and how we could make the world a better place for all of us. My characters are an extension of who I am (and who I wish I could be), so I do some of my living through my characters.

But it's in my fictional worlds that I'm able to vent my frustrations and address my negative emotions. It's a healthy outlet for the violence that sometimes rages in my heart. There is a reason why many of my writing buddies call me the Queen of Violence. Within my fictional worlds, I'm not afraid to blow up entire cities just to kill the one person who pissed me off.

And without that healthy outlet, I struggle to rein in the negative emotions in my real life.

My close family and friends recognized the mental need for my fictional writing long ago. But they also recognize how much the financial situation of this publishing venture also plagues my mind, often sending me into depressive states—which results in a greater need for the fiction writing where more violence is unleashed.

It sounds odd to say that writing about death and carnage brings me joy, but it does. And my writing buddies see the giddiness spread across my face as I tell them about what chaos I have planned for my stories.

And because of how much joy I get from the writing process, I need to find a way to stop stressing about finances and marketing to focus on the writing.

No doubt, I will continue to have anxiety about money, particularly as the cost of living significantly increases. But I hereby give myself permission to ignore the latest marketing tactic to drive sales and to bring in editorial and coaching clients. I hereby give myself permission to lean into the word-of-mouth strategies, so I can have the mental bandwidth to do what brings me the most joy (which is writing and working with story).

And I'm going to do the best I can to stop being a slave to the almighty dollar.

Because no one has ever had "He didn't earn enough" carved on their gravestone.