#011 - Sometimes We’re Quick to Give Up or Discard Something

Welcome back to another episode of Hit Splits. This is Shelly Hits. And today I just want to talk about how we're so quick to discard things. Whether it's working on a first draft of a certain manuscript and you just think, no, this isn't good. I'm going to move on to a new book or a new project or a new thing, or we're trying a certain marketing technique and we try something and we just don't see the results we expect. We're like, oh, no, this isn't working. I need to try something else. The new bright and shiny object. Right? Anyone else have bright shiny object syndrome? I have it, too. And I have to rein myself in every day from going down all the rabbit holes. And when I say rein myself in, I literally am visualizing being on a horse and saying, whoa. And pulling back the reins and saying, let's slow down, let's stop. Let's not go that way. Because I have a million ideas. I mean, I'm a creative entrepreneur, and as creatives, we are idea factories.

Idea factories. I know how it feels. And yet sometimes we just simply need to finish what we've started and not discard the thing so easily. And it just came to my mind today when I was trying to use a fountain pen that I'd ordered off of Amazon. And I've ordered this particular brand of fountain pen several times, probably, I don't know, even four or five times. I just really like the pen. It's fairly inexpensive. I. There's just something about writing with a fountain pen that I like, probably because I'm an artist and. I don't know, there's just something I like about it. It can get kind of messy, and it's not always the easiest, but I just like it. And so I decided to get one because I wanted a fountain pen for every place that I write notes in the house so I don't have to keep going and grabbing a pen or whatever. And I bought this pen off of Amazon. I tried it out and it just. It wasn't working. I did everything that I normally do, and I was like, I'm just ready to return this to Amazon. It's not working. I mean, it just wouldn't even scratch out a faint line. It was. It was so weird. So today I was starting to go through the return process with Amazon. I don't know, something just stopped me. And it. There was something in the process that I thought, well, I just don't know. I think they were asking me to return it in the Original packaging and I'd already thrown that away. And sometimes Amazon will work with, you know, on a return. But I thought, well, you know what, let me just try one more thing. And with fountain pens, sometimes you need to flush out the ink of the pen. You need to rinse it out. There's just different things that sometimes you need to do. That's why I'm saying sometimes it's high maintenance. But.

Like I said, for me it's been worth it. But I thought, let me try that. So I tried flushing out the ink and you know, kind of let it kind of kind of drip out and drain out and dry a little bit, put the ink back in and wouldn't, you know, worked. Now we'll see how, how it goes long term. But it brought to my mind how quickly I was going to discard that pen because it wasn't working and yet I wasn't willing to try something else. So sometimes when you're stuck writing, I mean, a certain manuscript, a certain book, maybe it's just you need to work on a different chapter. Maybe it's not that you're to discard the entire topic or the entire book. Yeah, maybe, maybe God is leading you to do some editing and maybe that means deleting and taking out, you know, certain chapters. Now I don't recommend completely deleting those chapters. Save them somewhere else because you never know when you might repurpose those for something else. Sometimes even with Fiction Novelist, you can use like deleted scenes as the lead magnet or something fun to share with your audience later. For nonfiction, it could become blog post, podcast videos. I mean, who knows, maybe it'll be part of a different book. That happened to me, actually. With broken crayons, still color. It was going to be a 12 week study and it ended up becoming a six week study. So that means that 12 chapters got the cut and it was painful. And yet I wasn't going to give up on the whole book. But you know, I did remove a significant part of it. But you know, with marketing, maybe it's not that you give up completely on that particular marketing technique, but maybe there are some tweaks that you need to make or maybe there are some things that, that you want to do differently. And I always say test track and tweak. So you need to know your numbers, you need to, you know, give it time. And if you've given it time and you're not, see, still not seeing the results. Yeah, maybe there is something better for you. Typically with marketing, when you're trying to reach new people. You're either going to do that through organic marketing, like social media or SEO, search engine optimization, through blogs, YouTube videos, Pinterest, or you're going to borrow audiences. So you're going to do podcast interviews, summits, you know, email swaps. We talked all about all of these things in our most recent conference with the Kingdom Writers Conference on collaborations. Or you're going to do paid ads. So for books, Amazon ads, you know, works really well, but you have options and you have opportunities. But the free organic marketing and the SEO, it takes time to see results. It's not like you're just going to. To start doing that and then you're going to see, like a flood of new followers, new email subscribers, new book sales. I mean, it could happen. Occasionally it happens, but typically it takes time. Even with collaborations and paid ads, you will see results quicker. But depending on what you do and depending on how it all goes, there may be some tweaks that are needed. There may be some things that you want to do differently the next time. And so I just want to encourage you, pray and ask the Lord before you give up on something, ask the Lord, is there anything that I need to do differently before I give up on this, before I discard this thing? You know, today I was so glad that I went ahead and tried that with the fountain pen and it worked again. I was like, yay. I. I don't like, you know, feeling like something gets thrown away and wasted or whatever, but it just reminded me that even with our writing, publishing, and marking process, there may be times that we're quick to give up or discard an idea or a process when really all it needs is a certain intervention, a tweak, and God can lead us to what that is. So thank you again for joining me on this episode of Hit Splits, and I'll talk to you next time.