Today I was thinking about where I was this year at this time — with my business, I mean. There was a lot of talk about the economy and the recession last winter, and my January income was pretty short. That wasn't unusual in itself — the first month of the year is typically pretty slow for me — but then February was short too.

Also this time last year, I was getting ready for a trip to Haworth and London at the very beginning of March. You can read all about my adventures here:

The longest day of my life
My working vacation
Advantages and disadvantages of the handheld laptop
Literary travels: A writer's journey, part I
Inspiration: A writer's journey, part 2
A writer's journey, part 3

Fast forward to 2010. January proved to be a bit more lucrative, and February is shaping up to be the same. Still not raking in the dough, but then I never am this time of year. I am making more time for my horse now than I was a year ago, though, which is a good thing. I am also having to make time to force-feed a sick cat, which isn't such a good thing — although of course I would never choose the alternative.

Another major difference is that I'm making more of a commitment to work on my fiction now than I was this time last year. During NaNoWriMo, I worked on the novel I'd started during our trip to Europe in March. I'm still not quite done with it, but now that Kathy Kehrli and I are doing virtual write-ins once a week (when we can manage it), I'm at least moving ahead at a regular (if slow) pace.

This year has begun a bit differently than usual. No New Year's resolutions, and I haven't done monthly assessments on my blog in quite a while. I feel a bit like I'm surfing from month to month, wave to wave, with hardly time to do anything except a few things I force myself to make time for (riding being one of them). Not even my blogs are getting as much attention as they used to.

In some ways, I like the changes between this year and last. Spending more time with both my horse and my novel are major advantages to the harried schedule I've been keeping, and of course nursing my cat is a necessity. But I'd also like to do some more marketing and update my website (finally), and I'm honestly not sure how I'll find the time for either.

How about you? How has your business — and your life — changed from this time last year?

Labels: freelancing

Most weekdays, I get on the computer for an hour or so after I get up, and then head out to the barn. Today, however, I was feeling like I needed to get a jump start on my work for the week, so I decided to forego my ride.

Here's what is on my list for today:

* Blogging (check)
* A few content articles for a client
* Planning/brainstorming an article for another client
* Laundry (the bane of my existence)
* Mail a book and pick up a few books from the library
* Work on my novel, if I have time

I'm also thinking that I'll take advantage of some of the extra time, since I'm not going out to the barn, and read for a little while. It's not often that I read during the day when I should be working, so every once in a while I have to break down and do it.

Of course, putting my novel last on the list is a good way to end up pushing it back a day (or more), but luckily I think Michael has homework to do tonight, which should allow me to work a bit later today.

What is (or was) on your to-do list for today?

Labels: time management

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been working on my novel again. With one exception (Thursday night I added 800 words to it), the only work I've done on it has been on Saturdays, when Kathy Kehrli and I do our virtual write-in. Last Saturday I only added 400 words, but today I did much better: 1,061 words.

The weekly write-in prevents me from getting too far away from the novel, so that the trail doesn't get cold, so to speak. It's far from ideal, though. Kathy and I were talking today about trying to write every day, and it got me to thinking about how I could work that into my schedule.

Those of you who read my blog frequently know that I do the occasional experiment in increasing my productivity, which is something I really struggle with as a freelancer. Right now I've been wondering if a more regimented daily schedule would help. I don't usually operate on a schedule, but lately I've been letting the barn eat up a lot of my work time during the day — not something I regret, but not exactly conducive to getting lots of work done, either.

So I'm pondering how I could make up a daily schedule that would help me to get more done in a day. In addition to barn time and client work, I would ideally schedule time every day for novel writing and blogging (another thing I've struggled with finding time for lately). The challenge is that I really need to be able to go to the barn during the morning, when it is relatively quiet, yet Michael's presence in the evening makes it hard to just extend my work day out a little.

I'll let you know what I come up with.

Labels: increasing productivity

After over a month of neglect, I've finally gotten back to work on my NaNoWriMo novel. Fellow freelancer and friend Kathy Kehrli and I are scheduling virtual write-ins together using Facebook chat — by having a predetermined time when we both have committed to sitting down and right, we'll both (theoretically) have the motivation we need to continue working on our novels.

Yesterday's write-in wasn't wildly successful — we spent some time catching up via chat, rather than writing — but it did succeed in breaking the ice, so to speak, and getting me working on my novel again. The night before, I started thinking about where I wanted to pick up and what I wanted to write, so I was ready to go by the time we started writing. And once the juices started flowing, I was able to continue writing sporadically for a couple of hours after we both signed off from Facebook.

All said and done, I added 1,938 words to my rough draft yesterday. Not a huge amount, considering I worked on it for several hours, but the real accomplishment was getting back to work on it again. Not to mention I got to update my word count meter for the first time in over a month!

Labels: novel writing

Several of my blogging buddies have descried making New Year's resolutions this year. I'm undecided as to whether I will — I haven't met them the last couple of years, but it still seems like a good "year in review" topic for my blog.

One thing I did decide to do was start off 2010 the right way: clean and organized! This afternoon I cleaned my desk, and what was covered in stacks of papers up to a foot high (!), now looks like this:



My inbox is still a bit full, but the fact that you can actually see the surface of my desk is a vast improvement.

I also made all my files for 2010, did a few last things to organize my files from 2009, and planned a fun book giveaway for my horse blog. An uncharacteristically motivated way to begin the year!

Labels: freelancing

One of the necessary evils of being a freelance writer is all the administrative stuff that goes along with it.

Keeping well-organized records is incredibly important. For instance, emails organized in separate folders by client help you to keep track of project details, payment amounts, etc.

I've always been a stickler about keeping records. I save ALL client emails, record each payment in an Excel spreadsheet, save PayPal receipts as PDFs, and scan checks before depositing them. Unfortunately, lately I've gotten to be pretty lax about emails, and as a result my inbox was up to around 6,500 emails by the time I finally went through it last week.

Learn from my mistakes. I spent an entire day going through emails before I finally got my inbox down to about 1,000. A day spent reading old emails, filing, and (sadly) responding to some very old emails from the contact form on my websites that I had missed in all that mess. Luckily, none of them were missed client opportunities, but in a way they were worse: Most were pleas for advice from people who had happened upon my blog on feline hepatic lipidosis.

Don't let your inbox get out of control. It takes a few minutes to answer an email, and a matter of seconds to file where they belong. Much better than wasting an entire day that could have been better spent on billable client work!

Labels: freelancing admin

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten back to work on my novel since the night NaNoWriMo ended. However, I have found a new word count meter to replace the now-defunct NaNoWriMo widget.

Just in case anyone else is interested in putting a word count meter on their blog the other 11 months out of the year, this is the one I used: another little progress meter

The nice thing about this meter is that it isn't dependent on someone else's website remaining in place, like the last non-NaNo word count meter I used. This one is totally code driven, so if they ever take down their page all you have to do is update the percentages and word count in the code yourself.

Stay tuned for future word count updates!

Labels: novel writing