Just when I think I have finally mastered my schedule of writing, teaching, blogging and social media-ing, my agent says I need one more task. Since I’m writing a book about dealing with addiction/mental illness from a loved one’s standpoint, I need a blog about that too. Nothing too hard about that, right?
Writing Tip for Today: Over and over I hear about the pressing need to define oneself as an author. We need to brand ourselves like soap. We need to be “friends” with everyone on the planet. We need to work tirelessly to be known. Well, it’s all true. Except, that as I prepare to jump off another cliff of responsibility, I should heed my own advice:

• Better a Little Well-done than a Lot Undercooked. I’m going to reduce my Writing Tips and Miss Writerly Crankypants blogs to twice a week, and see if I can squeeze in at least one Hope for Moms of Addicts post per week. I’d rather do a great job on fewer posts than put up a lot of disorganized or random stuff.
• Balance Connection with Relevance. In all 3 of these blogs I will work toward connecting with readers while offering them useful content. If one or the other of these elements takes over, I can’t accomplish my mission. I may eventually have to have a 4th blog or site for my fiction, which seems to feature a lot of Native American characters.
• Writer Identity Crisis. As I attempt to define who I am as a writer, like many creative types, I’m having a tough time pinning myself down. I’m interested in a lot of things, but readers seem to want to remember authors not by their names as much as their stories. Especially if one of my books becomes a hit (I know, a big dream), I’ll be forced to label myself. Am I an historical fictioneer whose interest lies in the Old West? Or a survivor and encourager of others who deal with addiction or mental illness? At some point, my readers will demand to know. And so will yours.