It's Time to Start Over

Happy New Year! It’s once again time to start again. Funny how this one day can make such a difference. Personally, I try to use this day to get myself reorganized for the coming year. And you should, too.  As the year rolls on, things may seem to unravel. Does your recordkeeping fall short? Do your about writing seem to get more vague? Does your mind begin to wander as emergencies and small crises pop up?

As another year dawns, it’s time to reflect on your writing career. If you just started out in 2016, then you’ve got your whole career ahead of you. If you’ve been writing a while, then maybe it’s time to take stock of what you’ve accomplished and make some plans for the future. Make 2017 the year you go somewhere with your work.

Let’s say you’ve just begun to work as a freelance writer. Did you find it hard to place your work in the marketplace? Did the process seem frustrating? Do you think you’ve exhausted every avenue?

If you answered “yes” to the above questions, then you have most likely haven’t followed the path of least resistance. Most beginners start out by sending their work to top publications. That’s your first mistake. Remember, you’re a beginner. You haven’t been in the marketplace long enough to establish credentials. So maybe you ought to plan ahead for 2017 so that you can get at least one piece—and hopefully many more—published.

Here are a few tips to getting on track in the coming year:

Write about what you know. The first mistake many beginning writers make is writing about subjects they know nothing about. Stick close to home. Write about subjects having to do with work or with a special interest of yours. Doing so will help build your confidence and give what’s called a “voice of authority” to your work. (More on voice of authority will appear in a later blog).

Keep your pieces relatively short. Another mistake beginners make is writing everything there is to know on a subject. It’s not really their fault, however, since the only type of writing they learned to do in school that had anything to do with research was term papers and reports.

Write to communicate. You’re not writing for a grade as you did in school. You’re writing to communicate information to your readers. Unlike your teachers, your readers want to learn about your subject and be somewhat entertained at the same time.

Start with small publications. Search for publications that work with beginning writers. The editors of top publications are too busy to fuss with the musings of beginners. They need writing that’s concise, accurate, and professional, leaving little for them to do but lay it out and print it.

Set reasonable goals. Create reasonable goals for yourself for the coming year and see to it that you achieve them. Check on them occasionally to make sure you’re on track. And if you get off track, get back on as soon as possible. Lots of things can knock you off your game—illness, even a cold, family emergencies, a death in the family, etc. Remind yourself to review your goals in six months to see if they’re still possible or if you have to adjust them to your present situation.

Good luck and make this weekly blog part of your regular reading for 2017.

Reflections and New Beginnings

For many writers, the New Year means a time to reflect on what happened during the past year. For others, it’s a chance for a new beginning. Whichever one it is for you, the New Year offers a time to set new goals and analyze your situation. Just as retailers set aside the month of January to review their inventory, so should you review not only what you wrote and published in the last year, but accomplishments you achieved and problems you need to solve.

To move forward, you have to plan ahead. Recognize problems early on—set down goals you want to reach, obstacles you need to overcome, and the resources you have at your disposal. Doing all of these things is almost as good as solving the problems, themselves.

But you can’t move forward successfully without a plan. You need to assess each situation and draw on the resources or ideas best suited for it. To do this efficiently, you’ll need to prepare a situation summary. This is not only a review of each particular situation, but an analysis of it with goals specified for its improvement.

First, jot down each problem you had in 2015. You may have had only one or two, but if it wasn’t such a good year, you may have more than that. Tackle each one separately by preparing a situation summary for each.

Decide the best way to improve the situation, followed by the goals you need to achieve to solve the problem or get started in your new direction. Together these are known as a situation summary.

Although you can use a situation summary at any time to resolve difficult business decisions, writing up one or more of them at the beginning of the year will set you off on the right foot.

A common problem facing many freelance writers is upgrading their markets. Perhaps you’ve published several articles or short stories in local newspapers or small regional magazines, none of which pay you enough to make a living. You want to continue freelancing but to do that you’ll have to sell to more reliable, higher-paying markets. This is where a situation summary can work wonders.

To begin, jot down a short concise statement of what you’d like to do. Next you need to write down your goals—both long and short term—as well as actions you’ll need to take to reach them. Be specific. Lay out a detailed plan, including relevant dates and resources required. For each goal, write down three actions.

Following your goals and actions, you should write down the benefits of the actions you’ll be taking. Will they increase your financial bottom line, increase your work schedule flexibility, or give you peace of mind—or all three?

How much time or money will be required to achieve your goals? Will you have to spend additional time writing and marketing that might be spent with your family? Will you need to purchase new or additional computer equipment and programs? Or will you need to do a good deal of research to go in-depth with a subject?

What if what you’ve got planned doesn’t work out? List some alternative solutions and why you should stick to your main plan. Let’s call this “Plan B.” However, often these alternatives present other problems that make reaching your goals for the new year doubly hard.

If you’re seeking to improve your markets, you must allow a block of time to study what’s out there. Are there editors out there that you know that might help you advance your plan? List anyone and everyone who may be able to help you. Can you build on what you’re doing now? Perhaps you can spin off a new specialty from a subject that you’ve written a lot about?

Lastly, set a date to review your actions—say in a month or two. And set a date to review your short-term goals to see if you’ve reached one or all of them, most likely at the end of the first or second quarter.

A situation summary should be flexible, so you can adjust it as you go. Look for the positive side of whatever develops and build on it. And if you do, you’ll definitely have a Happy New Year.

NEXT WEEK: I’ll continue with designing a successful writer’s Web site.

Getting and Staying Motivated

There’s nothing harder for a writer than getting and staying motivated. In this high-tech, whirlwind world, it’s often hard to focus on the job at hand. If your cell phone isn’t buzzing to let you know someone desperately wants to speak with you, then it may be vibrating to let you know that you know that someone posted something on your Facebook Page. And then, of course, there’s your family, the stress at work, and who knows what else. What can you do to stay motivated when you’re bombarded with all this?

Well, take heart. There is a way.

There are probably lots of times when your head is just bursting with ideas. You can’t wait to get started—but you never do. If that’s the case, you have a problem with getting motivated. To sort things out, jot down as many of those ideas as you can. Look them over and pick three that stand out from all the rest.

Study those three and ask yourself why each is a good idea. Also ask how relevant each of them is. And finally ask how passionate you are about each one. One of them will stand out after asking these questions. That’s the one to start working on. At this point, forget about getting published and just get to work.

Get yourself excited about this new idea. Dive into researching it. The deeper you go in your research, the more fascinating the topic will become. You may even get so motivated that you ignore that blasted cell phone vibrating in your pocket!

But getting motivated and staying motivated are two different things. That initial surge of writing energy will only last so long, then what?

Visualize where you’d like to be with this project and your writing in general in say six months. Do you see your work being enjoyed by readers? That’s not the same as being published. While the two are intertwined, most writers don’t go beyond seeing themselves published. They forget about their readers. And the secret to success is that you just can’t do that. Your readers are the most important part of the process.

Imagine readers getting excited about what you’ve written. Imagine them laughing or crying. When a reader says they just couldn’t put a book down, that’s a testimony to good writing. Make that happen to your work.

To be sure you stay on track, set a writing time and place. Work writing into your schedule just like eating and exercising. Develop a writing routine (See “There’s Something to be Said for Routine While Working” from Feb. 17, 2014).

Ask yourself what would you like to accomplish with this piece of writing? Every piece of writing should afford you some sort of accomplishment. It may improve your writing skills. It may help you to advance your characterization skills. Or it may increase your knowledge substantially about a particular subject. No writing project is worthless. All contribute somehow to your writing ability and your outlook on life.

To stay motivated, set some goals for yourself. Look ahead. See the bigger picture. Set some long-range goals covering perhaps a year and some short-range goals covering a month or so (See “Setting Goals” from Jan. 4, 2013).

Take time out to read. Reading will stimulate your brain and give you even more ideas. Non-fiction is best. The fantasy of novels doesn’t always stimulate your brain enough because you get involved in the everyday lives of the characters in them. Everything is pretty much thought out for you. But with non-fiction, you’re often forced to think of other things related to what you’re reading.

Above all, decide why you want to write. What drives you? Why do you torture yourself with it? When you know the answers to those questions, you’ll be able to stay motivated, perhaps for a long, long time.




                                          
       

Planning for the New Year

As the holidays come to a close, most people’s thoughts turn to looking forward to the New Year. They make a lot of resolutions that last perhaps a week, then it’s back to the old grind. Without some serious thought and planning, you may find yourself back where you were a week or so ago.

Realistically, there’s nothing new about the New Year. It’s begins on the day following the last day of the old year. For some it’s just another day. For others it’s the beginning of a new year, filled with promise and perhaps success. Frankly, the new year can begin on any day of the year. So if you don’t get started on January 1, there’s always the 2nd and 3rd. It’s never too late to plan ahead.

Before you start planning for 2015, take a look at what you accomplished in 2014. Take a look at not just your writing accomplishments but everything you managed to accomplish in the past year. How have you grown as a person? How have your relationships with others improved? How has your writing improved?

Many writers fail to take a hard look at their accomplishments. This past year may have been one filled with problems and downturns, but underneath all that is likely a glimmer of light— one or more things you did that stood out. Try to find those glimmers of light and focus on them, rather than the negative things that happened to you. And while the negative side of things can overpower the positive side, the positive things are still there. It’s up to you to find them.

Make a list of your writing accomplishments. Don’t limit them to just pieces you’ve gotten published, but to what you think you’ve done that was not only good but super, even if editors didn’t think so.

What’s missing from this list? Were there pieces you wanted to write but didn’t get time? Did you miss the mark on the better markets? Was there something special you wanted to write about but never had the chance? And finally, did you make enough money? The answers to these questions will help you plan for 2015.

In order to create a plan of action, you need to set down some goals for this year. Goals come in two forms—long term and short term. The former helps you plan way ahead while the latter helps you stay focused on the here and now.

Long term goals usually span three to six months, sometimes even as much as a year or more. These might include breaking into new markets or working on a book. Ask yourself where would you like to be with your writing in, say six months. What would you like to accomplish?  What skills need improvement to enable you to achieve your goals?

Short term goals are more current, covering as little as a week or as much as a month. They’re also more specific. For instance, you might set a goal to get a particular article or story published. Or you may set some fitness goals to get your body and your mind in better shape.

For both long and short-term goals, you’ll need to list what you need to do to accomplish them. Limit these needs to three. That’s realistic, given the amount of time you’ll have to devote to accomplishing them. More than three may overwhelm you, causing you to avoid that particular goal.

Above all, keep things simple. Don’t list too many goals for a specific amount of time. Set only the number of goals, both long and short-term, that you can easily accomplish in the time you’ve set.

Writing down goals is one thing. You’ll then have to make yourself review them from time to time to make sure you’re staying on track. Set a time to review what you’ve accomplished—at the end of a month, at the end of three or six months, at the end of the year. How did you do? Did you fall short, and if so, by how much?

Don’t worry if you failed to accomplish a goal or two. Just roll the unfulfilled goals over to the next time period. For your yearly goals, there’s always next year. And for your short-term goals, there’s always next week, next month, or next quarter. But don’t just keep pushing goals ahead. Doing so will prevent you from making any progress. Stay on track and move forward so that at the end of 2015, you’ll have a lot to look back on.

                                  
                                       

Looking Ahead

As another year passes into history, it’s time to reflect on your writing career. If you just started out in 2013, then you’ve got your whole career ahead of you. If you’ve been at this a while, then maybe it’s time to take stock of what you’ve accomplished and make some plans for the future.

Let’s say you’ve just begun to work as a freelance writer. Did you find it hard to place your work in the marketplace? Did the process seem frustrating? Do you think you’ve exhausted every avenue?

If you answered “yes” to the above questions, then you have most likely haven’t followed the path of least resistance. Most beginners start out by sending their work to top publications. That’s your first mistake. Remember, you’re a beginner. You haven’t been in the marketplace long enough to establish credentials. So maybe you ought to plan ahead for 2014 so that you can get at least one piece—and hopefully many more—published.

Here are a few tips to getting on track for 2014:

Write about what you know. The first mistake many beginning writers make is writing about subjects they know nothing about. Stick close to home. Write about subjects having to do with work or with a special interest of yours. Doing so will help build your confidence and give what’s called a “voice of authority” to your work. (More on voice of authority will appear in a later blog).

Keep your pieces relatively short. Another mistake beginners make is writing everything there is to know on a subject. It’s not really their fault, however, since the only type of writing they learned to do in school that had anything to do with research was term papers and reports.

Write to communicate. You’re not writing for a grade as you did in school. You’re writing to communicate information to a reader. Unlike your teachers, your readers want to learn about your subject and be somewhat entertained at the same time.

Start with small publications. Search for publications that work with beginning writers. The editors of top publications are too busy to fuss with the musings of beginners. They need writing that’s concise, accurate, and professional, leaving little for them to do but lay it out and print it.

Set some goals. Create some goals for yourself for the coming year and see to it that you achieve them. Check on them occasionally to make sure you’re on track. And if you get off track, get back on as soon as possible. Lots of things can knock you off your game—illness, even a cold, family emergencies, a death in the family, etc. Remind yourself to review your goals in six months to see if they’re still possible or if you have to adjust them to your present situation.

Good luck and make this blog part of your reading for the coming year.

The Five-Year Plan

In freelance writing, the present often dominates. But unless you look to the future, you’ll be stuck in the present with nowhere to look to. This is especially true as your assignments get bigger and more complicated. Managing them can be a bear.

You need to know or at least have an idea of where you want to be in five years. Do you see yourself freelancing full time for a host of markets? Or do you see yourself writing books, one right after the other?

Do you know how much money you want to be making? What kind of writing—articles, stories, books, brochures, or a combination of these—do you anticipate selling? Projecting further into the future gives you a push to start acquiring the skills you might need.

But before you start planning for the future, begin making a list of the people who might help to make your dreams come true or at least of places where you'll find help in accomplishing your goals. This will help you to avoid veering off into sidelines that aren't financially beneficial to you.

A five-year plan also helps you to keep tabs on your best, most lucrative and satisfying ideas. Be both realistic and ambitious—five years can be a very short or a very long time. But if you don't look that far ahead, you'll discover you've lost much more than just five years of your time.

Begin your five-year plan by asking yourself where you want to be at the end of your career as a freelancer? Do you even see an end to your career? Freelancing is a profession that doesn’t have to end. It’s something you can do more or less of as time goes on. It’s all up to you and your health and economic status.

Set a target for two years from now. This is enough time to let your plan play out, but not so long as to not give you time to reflect on it.

What kind of assignments do you want to receive on a regular basis? In the beginning, you’ve been so focused on just getting published at first, then regularly, that you probably haven’t had time to think about the bigger picture. Are you taking anything that comes along just for the money or are you weighing in other things, like the relationships you have with editors, how quickly and how much they pay, and, believe it or not, if they appreciate you and your work.

Once you think about the types of assignments you’d like, think about what you need to know to get them? How much education, formal or otherwise do you need to upgrade your skills? How  much experience will working with particular assignments require? What types of people to you need to gather for contacts?

The next question you have to ask yourself is what have you done so far that will help you? For this, you’ll need to start keeping a log, noting each assignment, how you did it, and the resources, people included, that you used to complete it.

What barriers do you see between where you are now and where you want to be in five years? Perhaps you don’t see any obstacles, but the road to freelance success is littered with them. Recognize this and prepare for them.

Publishing is changing at a rapid pace. Magazines are dying like flies sprayed with insect bomb. Trying to stay afloat, book publishers are merging faster than you can blink your eye. Will your long-term plan be able to cope with upcoming industry changes?

How well do you present yourself and your talents? Are you too timid or too difficult? Do you overreact to criticism? Are you trying to handle everything yourself instead of looking for the right kind of help? Have there been warnings that you’ve ignored?

As with any plan, your five-year plan must be flexible. You should constantly be updating it and adjusting it to fit your needs. But more importantly, be realistic. Know what you do best and then do it.

Setting Goals

Just as an ice hockey player sets his eye on the goal with the objective of getting the puck past the goalie, so you should set your eye on the upcoming year. But instead of just one goal into which to cast your lot, you should have several.

To begin, take a look at what you’ve accomplished in the past year. Make a list of your writing accomplishments. Don’t limit them to just pieces you’ve gotten published, but to what you think you’ve done that was not only good but super, even if editors didn’t think so.

What’s missing from this list? Were there pieces you wanted to write but didn’t get time? Did you miss the mark on the better markets? Was there something special you wanted to write about but never had the chance? And finally, did you make enough money?

After you’ve analyzed your accomplishments, it’s time to set down some goals to make this year, 2013, better than last. Your main goal in your freelance writing business is to move forward. If you fell back a few steps or remained stagnant, then it’s time to give yourself a kick in the butt and get moving.

Goals come in two types: long term and short term. The former helps you plan way ahead while the latter helps you stay focused on the here and now.

Long term goals usually span three to six months, sometimes even as much as a year or more. These might include creating and working on a book idea or breaking into new markets. Ask yourself where would you like to be with your writing in, say six months. What would you like to accomplish?  What skills need improvement to enable you to achieve your goals?

Short term goals are more current, covering as little as a week or as much as a month. They’re also more specific. For instance, you might set a goal to get a particular article or story published. Or you might promote yourself on one of the social networks.

For both long and short-term goals, you’ll want to list what you need to do to accomplish them. Limit these needs to three. That’s realistic, given the amount of time you’ll have to devote to accomplishing them. More than three may overwhelm you, causing you to avoid that particular goal.

Above all, keep things simple. Don’t list too many goals for a specific amount of time. Set only the number of goals, both long and short-term, that you can easily accomplish in the time you’ve set.

Once you have your goals in place, set time to review them. The obvious is at the end of this year. But you’ll want to review your short-term goals as they come due, much like a certificate of deposit. Did you accomplish what you set out to do? Did you fall short and if so, by how much?

If you failed to accomplish a goal or two, don’t fret. Just roll the unfulfilled goals over to the next time period. For your yearly goals, there’s always next year. And for your short-term goals, there’s always next week, next month, or next quarter. Generally, review all your goals at the end of each quarter, at least for the first year. Doing so will enable you to see where you’ve been, what you’ve accomplished, and what you need to do to move ahead.

                                  
                                       

Expanding Your Horizons

So you’ve managed to garner a bit of work in a few select markets. And the work you’ve received from them has been more or less steady. But you somehow feel that you could do more. Now may be the time to consider expanding your horizons.

Some freelance writers are generalists—writing about anything and everything that comes their way. Others write about a select groups of subjects, and still other specialize in one subject area. What one are you?

Have you exhausted the possibilities of your current markets? Might competitors of your present markets be interested in your work? You need to give this some careful thought. When pursuing new markets in the same subject area, you need to be cautious. Many editors of specialty magazines want you to write almost exclusively for them. If they get even the slightest indication that you’re writing for even one of their competitors, they’ll drop you like a hot potato. However, if that same editor has been holding off publishing your pieces and perhaps favoring other writers over you, then you should give his or her competitors a try.

What outlets have you ignored because you were too busy, disorganized, or too timid to try? If you have sufficient publishing credits behind you, it might be time to become more adventurous in your marketing? There may be markets that you tried long ago, and they rejected you? Remember, editors play musical chairs all the time. The editor that rejected your work has probably moved elsewhere by now. Even if he or she hasn't, try again.  Editors’ needs and preferences change. They're under constant pressure from their publishers to upgrade their operations.  Plus, your research and writing skills have most likely improved by now. And you may have a better idea of what they’re looking for. Your idea might be the very thing they've been searching for.

Have you been writing articles when you should have been putting together book proposals? Are you ready to write one? Beginning writers look at books as some sort of holy grail of writing. It’s probably because the authors get so much attention. And then there’s that author moniker. Isn’t it better to be an author than just a writer? Aren’t all authors writers anyway? Get off the impression bandwagon and decide if your skills are up to writing a book.  If so, think through some book ideas and pick the best, but not the most difficult, one.

Are you querying as many new markets with enough ideas to meet your financial goal by the end of the year? Don't worry about getting more acceptances than you think you can handle— remember the attrition rate on assignments. Remember, with rosier finances you can employ help or purchase better equipment.

Have you been promoting yourself as much as possible? Could you make yourself better known among editors and readers? All freelancers get caught up in the writing trap from time to time. As you receive more acceptances and assignments, your work load increases. And there’s only so much writing time in a day. What usually suffers is promotion since you aren’t literally bringing in cash with it in the present. Sometimes you just have to pay the bills and current cash wins out.

Should you write that novel that's been fermenting in your mind for so long? While this may be a great idea, it won’t bring in enough money to sustain you. A better compromise might be to write a series of short stories that you could self-publish as an ebook. Or perhaps work on a short non-fiction book that you can self-publish electronically or pitch to print publishers. Both will bring in some money while you work on your regular assignments.

By honestly answering the above questions, you’ll be able to plot a course for the months and years ahead while steering clear of unproductive paths as you broaden your horizons.

Ten Things to Do to Achieve Freelance Success

Anyone who plays the ponies knows that in order to boost your odds you need to know and do all you can. Guessing won’t get you the big money. And neither will closing your eyes and pointing to just any horse in the race. So it is with freelancing. To become a success, you have to make it happen. To do so requires you to honestly look at yourself and your business operation for weak areas that need to be improved upon or eliminated.

To get started on the right track, ask yourself the following 10 questions:

    1. Have you learned all you need to know to present yourself in the most professional manner? Look at related areas that might help. Tap any and all sources, including this blog, to learn all you can about the writing business.

    2. Have you kept current with the changes in your industry? What problems do other independent business owners—commercial artists, printers, bookstore owners, consultants, etc.—face every day?

    3. Have you studied your competition as much as possible? By noticing how other writers accomplish what they do, you may be able to pick up some of their techniques to improve  your business practices.

    4. Have you paid attention to current legislation that's bound to affect future business decisions in the industry? To do so you must read online news from Web sites in the industry and subscribe to their E-mail newsletters to be kept up to date, as well as  maintain open lines to important contacts who know about or may be able to influence that legislation (editors, elected officials, influential business persons, etc.).

    5. Have you joined any writing and/or business associations that may offer connections with fellow writers and markets? Have you participated in seminars given by experts in your field?

    6. Have you observed outstanding people in other fields and attempted to discover by what means they leaped forward in their careers?  Did they make bold changes of direction, timely innovations, or conceive creative promotional campaigns? Take time to lunch with friends in other businesses or fellow writers and quiz them intelligently.

    7. Have you set performance goals for yourself and stayed with them? Goals are a great way to motivate yourself.

    8. Have you honestly evaluated the work you've done? Take a hard look at what you’re producing and perhaps seek the opinions of others in the writing field.

    9. Have you trained yourself to troubleshoot problems? Solve problems as they arise rather than put them off until later.

    10: Have you learned to delegate and practiced motivating others to cooperate with you? You can’t do it all by yourself. Try outsourcing some smaller tasks of your business to allow yourself more time to write. When your business reaches a point where you can afford to hire help, and you need it, do so.

You’ll want to return to these pump-priming techniques repeatedly throughout your hopefully long and happy freelance career. You can't afford not to.

Looking Into That Crystal Ball

While it would be nice to have a crystal ball to look into to tell what’s going to happen in your freelance writing career, as far as technology is concerned, it’s just not possible. But there are ways you can predict or at least forecast what may happen. And with a little luck, it will.

If you’re determined enough, you can make anything happen. Your mind is a strange and fascinating thing. Let it work for you. So the first step when looking into the future is to think positively. Imagine yourself a success, and you’ll most likely succeed.

To help plan for the future, know where you hope to be in five years. What kind of writing—articles, stories, books, or a combination of these—do you anticipate producing? How much money do you want to be making? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you obtain the skills necessary for you to succeed.

To make sure you get where you want to go, you’ve got to create a five-year plan. This shouldn’t be set in concrete, but be flexible enough to change as time goes on. But at least you’ll know where you want to end up at the end of that time.

Begin by figuring out where you want to be at the end of your career. Do you see an end, or do you plan to write for the rest of your life? In the beginning, you may not know where you fit in the freelancing world, but after a year or two, you should have a pretty good idea. A freelance career is a living thing. It changes and evolves as it goes, so you’ll need to do the same.

Imagine where you’ll be two years from now. Do you see yourself working full time as a freelancer or do you plan on working part-time for the foreseeable future?

What kind of assignments do you want to receive on a regular basis? And what do you need to know to get them—knowledge, experience, kind of people for contacts, etc.? What have you done so far that will help you get started along this path? Make a list or a spreadsheet of every writing project or job, noting how you did it, with whom you were in contact, and how much you were paid. Seeing that information all together on paper will show you just how well you’re progressing or not. And if not, you’ll be able to see where you’re falling short.

What barriers do you see between where you are now and where you want to be in five years? Don’t be shy or sugar-coat the your situation. Note everything in detail. Is the lack of sufficient funds holding you back? Do you see a way around this? Do your family and friends support you, either financially or emotionally? Do you feel like a writer?

Analyze the current publishing situation. Things haven’t been so great lately. Will that affect your long-term plan. How can you adapt your plan to fit into upcoming industry changes? Do you see yourself publishing ebooks or are you set on print publishing?

How well do you present yourself and your talents? Are you shy about promoting yourself? Do you think that writers shouldn’t do that? Too many beginning writers pick up that kind of attitude from their schooling. To be a successful writer, you have to live in a studio apartment and starve for your craft. That’s nonsense. In today’s world, writers are working professionals just like lots of other people. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Do you overreact to criticism? Beginning writers are notoriously thin-skinned. You may think everyone is out to steal your work. If it’s worth stealing, then perhaps you’d have something to worry about. But as a beginner, it mostly likely isn't. Instead, concentrate on making your writing the best it can be.

Are you trying to handle everything yourself instead of looking for the right kind of help? If you’re having problems with a particular skill, get some help, either through a tutor or a class. Find out all you can about the kind of writing you intend to do. Read lots of examples of it. Become very familiar with its style or organization. Don’t think just because you read articles, stories, or books that you know how to write them.

What warnings have been coming back to you that you've ignored? Have you had the same pieces rejected again and again? Have any editors hinted at why they’ve rejected your work? Try to get some feedback, even from your friends. After all, some of them may be avid readers.

Creating a five-year plan will force you to keep track of the people and places where you'll find help in accomplishing your goals. You won't veer off into sidelines that aren't financially rewarding enough. A five-year plan also maintains vigilance over your best, most lucrative and satisfying ideas. Be both realistic and ambitious—five years can be a very short or a very long time. But if you don't look that far ahead, you'll discover you've lost much more than just five years of your time.

Taking Stock

For many writers, the New Year means a chance for a new beginning. For others, it offers a time to reflect on what happened during the past year. Whichever one it is for you, the New Year offers a time to set new goals and analyze your situation. Just as retailers set aside the month of January to take stock of their inventory, so should you take stock of not only what you wrote and published in the last year, but accomplishments you achieved and problems you need to solve.

To move forward, you have to plan ahead. Recognize problems early on—set down goals you want to reach, obstacles you need to overcome, and the resources you have at your disposal. Doing all of these things is almost as good as solving the problems, themselves.

No general ever goes into battle without some sort of plan. Military commanders need a map marked with all their troop units’ positions and weapons in order to make fast and effective decisions in the heat of battle. You need to do the same in order to assess your situation and draw on the resources or ideas best suited for each situation.

First, write down the problem or direction you’d like to take, followed by the goals you need to achieve to solve that problem or get started in your new direction. Together these are known as a situation summary.

Although you can use a situation summary at any time to resolve difficult business decisions, writing up one or more of them at the beginning of the year will set you off on the right foot.

A common problem facing many freelance writers is upgrading their markets. Perhaps you’ve published several articles or short stories in local newspapers or small regional magazines, none of which pay you enough to make a living. You want to continue freelancing but to do that you’ll have to sell to more reliable, higher-paying markets. This is where a situation summary can work wonders.

To begin, jot down a short concise statement of what you’d like to do. Next you need to write down your goals—both long and short term—as well as actions you’ll need to take to reach them. Be specific. Lay out a detailed plan, including relevant dates and resources required. For each goal, write down three actions.

Following your goals and actions, you should write down the benefits of the actions you’ll be taking. Will they increase your financial bottom line, increase your work schedule flexibility, or give you peace of mind—or all three?

How much time or money will be required to achieve your goals? Will you have to spend additional time writing and marketing that might be spent with your family? Will you need to purchase new or additional computer equipment and programs? Or will you need to do a good deal of research to go in-depth with a subject?

What if what you’ve got planned doesn’t work out? List some alternative solutions and why you should stick to your main plan. Some call this “Plan B.” However, often these alternatives present other problems that make reaching your goals for the new year doubly hard.

If you’re seeking to improve your markets, you must allow a block of time to study what’s out there. Are there editors out there that you know that might help you advance your plan? List anyone and everyone who may be able to help you. Can you build on what you’re doing now? Perhaps you can spin off a new specialty from a subject that you’ve written a lot about?

Lastly, set a date to review your actions—say in a month or two. And set a date to review your short-term goals to see if you’ve reached one or all of them, most likely at the end of the first or second quarter.

A situation summary, like a business plan, should be flexible and able to be adjusted as you go. Keep an open mind. Look for the positive side of whatever develops and build on it. And if you do, you’ll definitely have a Happy New Year.

The Seven W’s of Freelancing

You’re your own best resource. It all begins with you—who you are, where you live, what you need to survive, what you want out of life, what you believe in, what you know you can accomplish, and what you admit is difficult for you. These are the seven “W’s” of freelancing.

Let’s begin with who you are. Every person—every writer—is unique. Each sees the world in a personal way and interprets it for his or her readers. Everything about you affects the way you write—the environment in which you grew up, your family, your education, your likes and dislikes.

Where you live is equally important. Each region of the country has geographic and cultural differences that influence those who live there. You have been and still are being affected by the geography and climate of your region. Today, to be a successful writer it’s not as important to live in a metropolitan area. But where you live does affect the type of ideas you generate. And your ideas are the foundation of your writing.

Do you know what you need to survive as a writer? This could be better writing skills, better ideas, or better equipment—even money. Are you confident about your writing or do you need someone to tell you its good. It’s important to always work at improving your craft. Study works by your favorite writers and analyze them for the techniques they use. Record your ideas in an “Idea Book,” so that you won’t forget them. And buy the best computer and software you can afford. Remember, you don’t have to buy them new. Used or refurbished units work just fine—plus you don’t have to use the latest and greatest software. Financially, how much will you need to live satisfactorily? Will your writing alone bring in enough for you to live on or will you have to supplement your income. If you have to seek supplemental work, try to find something related to what you’re writing about. Then you’ll increase your knowledge while bringing in extra cash.

Have you given some thought to what you want out of life? The primary goal of beginning writers is to get published. But once you’ve done that, you need to know what you’re going to do next. Create a plan for the future, even if it’s only for six months ahead.

Your personal beliefs will definitely affect what you write. Everyone has personal opinions. Yours will work their way into your writing eventually. No matter whether you write non-fiction or fiction, your opinions will subconsciously seep into your work through topics you choose, themes, even dialogue of fictional characters.

Do you know what you can accomplish, based on your writing skill level? Most writers have no idea what their writing skill level is. Compare your writing to other writers—not the big names but other beginning writers who write about similar topics. Check out books from new writers. You’ll be able to tell immediately if their work is above or below you writing level. As a writer, you should be able to notice really good writing when you read it.

Can you be truthful with yourself and admit what’s difficult for you? People in general don’t like to admit their frailties. Writers aren’t any different. Make a list of your weaknesses–and not just those associated with writing. Once you have them down on paper, you’ll be able to work at making each stronger. You won’t be able to eliminate all of them, but just working at a few of them will make you a better writer and a better person.

Make a list of these seven “W’s” and post it on your bulletin board or your refrigerator. Remind yourself of them every day, and you will succeed.