Time Management for Nonfiction Writers: The Fine Art of Repurposing Your Work

Many writers don’t write full time. They fit their writing in and around their full-time jobs or around caring for their families. If they write for a living, or, like me, write and edit for a living, they may have little time to work on personal writing projects during the day. Plus, as we’ve seen if writers seriously take on the task of promoting themselves to build their platforms, this also can take up an enormous part of their day or the time that could be spent writing.

It’s no wonder, then that many writers, myself included, moan about the fact that they have no time to write. They also may complain that they have no time to market themselves with their writing. I’m here today (Yes, just me again…I’m the expert blogger.) to tell you that a way exists to get a lot of writing done and to use it in a variety of useful ways that doesn’t take up a lot of time. The most efficient time-management tool I have discovered over the years involves “repurposing” your work.

This means reusing your writing, as well as your telesminars, talks, blogs, news releases, etc., for other purposes. The best way for me to explain this is to offer you examples from my own experiences.

Let’s say I write a brief article for my Examiner.com column, a job I took on primarily for promotional reasons. It gives me great exposure online but pays very little. (If you would like to know more about how to become an Examiner, please read about Examiner.com here or apply here – but be sure to use my name when you apply—I get a $50 referral fee, and every little bit helps. Thanks.) I can then expand upon what I write in that column and use it in my blog at www.purespiritcreations.com/wordpress. I also then link the two, increasing readership in both places.

Here’s an even better example of how I repurpose material with very little effort: Each month I produce a podcast script for my show on Conversations with Mrs. Claus(www.thefamilyyak.com). This takes me most of a day. I then take a piece of the script, usually something that includes tips, and modify it slightly to create an article I can submit to the ezine distribution service I use, www.submityourarticle.com. I use this same article in my Pure Spirit Creations newsletter. Then, I take the same article and rewrite it as news release by placing some of the information in quotes. In other words, I make it sound as if someone interviewed me. I then submit this news release to ExpertClick.com’s newswire service, so it can be read by journalists.  (If you are interested in increasing your status as an expert and becoming a member of Expertclick.com or The Yearbook of Experts, please usethis link to receive $100 off our membership.) I may even use the same information as the basis for a blog post at www.purespiritcreations.com/wordpress. So, this one piece of work, which wasn’t even actually writing work—although it did take the form of a script, turned into three or four other pieces of writing. All my podcasts scripts may also become fodder one day for a book.

Blog posts also can be turned into articles or essays. Mine tend to be somewhat “essay like” in nature much of the time. It’s easy enough for me to add a few tips to them and submit them to an ezine distribution service, put them into my newsletter or actually submit the piece to a magazine. If yours tend to be more businesslike and include tips, think about how to modify them into personal essays or full-length articles by adding examples from your own life experiences. If you write a series on the same topic, you may find that you have the makings of an e-book or special report.

I added an opt-in to my website called the "Living Fully Challenge." I offered people a free one-year-long course, basically, in how to