Real Words

I’ve mentioned here a few times that I’m working on establishing and accomplishing a series of new writing goals. Those included:

• Cataloguing my work
• Getting published in more print magazines
• Finishing a personal book
• Doing more collaborative projects

I’ve added a few more goals to that list:

• Submitting work to anthologies
• Setting and achieving some clear goals for my 3 personal blogs
• Creating and executing a plan for more active promotion of my Hubs

Taking a look at my list, I’ve figured out that there is one specific writing goal that needs to come before everything else: getting organized!

I tend to be basically good at getting naturally organized. My freelance finances are in order. I’ve got my client’s files in good shape. None of that is a problem. However, I need more organization as it relates to these specific goals because there are areas where I’ve let things go. So, my specific goals for getting organized include:

• Doing my planning on paper. Several of these goals require creating action plans. I like to do those in my head but I’m actually going to do them on paper.
• Collecting all of my creative writing. I have poems, stories, essays and books that are written and half-written. They are in journals, on scraps of paper, on various computer files and who knows where else. Before I can reasonably submit work to anthologies and magazines, I need to be able to see what I have. This means learning about good methods of organizing this stuff and then going through the process of organizing it. That’s the big goal as far as this goes.
• Deleting all unnecessary files. I back things up all of the time and I have multiple copies of several things that I didn’t need to save in the first place. I want to get to where I only have what I really need again.

So, I’m still working on the bigger goals but I’m focusing right now on the small organizational goals that I believe will put me in a better place for meeting the big goals in the end.

It’s funny how things work out sometimes. I got a last-minute invitation to go camping and decided to work my schedule out in order to make that happen. I finished up all of the month’s work early and let everyone know that I would be gone. Then some things happened and the person that I was supposed to go camping with couldn’t go after all. I was bummed out about it for a little while but then I just let it go.

I think that I normally would’ve just returned to my standard routine but I’d already gotten it in my head that I needed this break from the Internet world. So, I decided to keep the computer off even though I was here at home. I didn’t contact my clients to let them know I was around. I didn’t sign back on to my social networking sites. I just pretended that I was still camping.

I managed to get a bunch of projects done around the house that I’d been working on for awhile. More importantly, I feel like the break helped me to get more solidly on track with some of my writing goals. With pen and paper in hand, I mapped out a daily and monthly work schedule that is more in line with my goals for work right now.

I also re-instituted my morning writing routine. I used to haev a solid routine that included some inspirational and educational reading, a little bit of blogging and journaling and some non-writing stuff like yoga. I’d gotten off track with that and was able to resume it in the past week. The lack of computer distractions helped me just sit still and be with myself. All in all, this vacation was good for my writing self even though it wasn’t what I’d planned on.

Just a quick note to let you know that I’m going to be gone through August 1st. A last-minute vacation worked out for me so I’m going to be taking it. Unlike most of my trips, which are working trips, this one is a laptop-free vacation. I’ll be leaving blogging and other web writing behind. I’ll be doing some camping and road tripping and getting back to the basics.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that I won’t be writing. I’ll have my journal and a notebook with me so that I can write the old-fashioned way. I’ll let you know how that goes when I get back! Have a great rest of the month!

I mentioned last week that I’d established some new writing goals for myself. Here’s an update on how I’m feeling about those so far:

• Creating a catalog of my work. I located all of the different disks and files that I’ve stored everything on over the years. That’s the first step in going through everything. That’s all I’ve done with it so far but at least I took a tiny action!
• One dozen magazine publications. I recently had someone request the right to republish one of my articles in a magazine. I want to get my hands on a hard copy of that magazine so I’ve emailed about that. I need to make a more solid plan about this goal though.
• Finish a personal book. I’ve committed to a specific book project that will take 9 months to complete. Since it’s in such early stages, I really don’t want to discuss the details but I’m on my way with this goal.
• Collaborative writing projects. I haven’t made any progress on this goal yet but writing about it today is making me feel more motivated to get some ideas out there for people to possibly pounce on.

Tell me about your writing goals. What tiny step have you taken recently to realize them?

I used to be really committed to taking a tech-free day every week. This was a day that didn’t allow for TV, computers or cell phone conversations. I was working A LOT of hours back then so it was an absolute necessity to take those days. But when I started working less, I kind of dropped the ball on this.

I’m thinking about instituting these tech-free days in my life again. I think it’s really important for me to unplug sometimes. The computer is the big problem. I spend pretty much all day on my computer. If I’m not working or reading or researching online then I’m watching Internet TV or playing Internet games.

I feel like if I turned this stuff off for an entire day every week, I’d get to do more of the things that I say that I want to do. I’d go wander around the city more. I’d do the creative projects that are always only half done around here. I’d sit still with myself.

I’m having a tough time re-committing to this though. I’m not sure what my hesitation is. I suppose that I should probably just take the leap.

Does anyone else do this?

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been working on some new writing goals. I love the fact that my freelance writing career has been very diverse. However, I feel like this diversity has also caused the problem that I haven’t made or met a lot of writing goals even though I’ve been writing professionally for nearly ten years. I’d like for that to change.

Part of my line of thinking is this:

I would really like to take a one-year sabbatical from freelance writing to pursue some personal growth and make some other life goals. I don’t know what will happen in that time. Although I assume that I will come back to freelance writing after that, I don’t want to bank on it. So … if I were to never return to freelance writing after that, what would I have liked to accomplish during the time that I worked as a freelance writer.

A few of the goals that I’d like to meet in the next three years are:

• Catalog of Work. I have a pretty good portfolio that links to a lot of my work. However, I’d really like to get a clear catalog of all of the work that I’ve completed. I want to be able to see all that I’ve accomplished in a clear manner.
• One Dozen Magazine Publications. I have been published in a few magazines but I have not pursued this as much as I would have liked over the years. I’d like to achieve the goal of being published in one dozen different magazines during the course of my freelance writing career.
• Finish a Personal Book. I have worked as an author on multiple books. However, these books were all commissioned or suggested by the publisher. I have several books that I’ve started on my own which I have not completed. I would like to complete one.
• Complete 5 Collaborative Writing Projects. I really love collaboration and I haven’t done enough of it. It doesn’t matter what the projects are but I’d like to complete at least five of them with writing as my part of the project.

There are some other goals that I have in mind but I haven’t figured out the details of them yet. These are the ones that I’m certain I want to complete in the next three years.

What are your writing goals? Are you ready to put them out there for the world to see?

People who read this blog regularly know that I’ve had some ups and downs with my writing lately and that I’ve been trying to set some new writing goals. There are quite a few goals that I’ve got in mind (see tomorrow’s post if those goals interest you at all) but the big one is this:

I’d like to take one year off from writing.

I love the work that I do but sometimes I feel like I’m getting burned out. I write literally hundreds of articles per month in order to be able to have enough money to pay my bills. When you write that much, you start to say the same things again and again without meaning to. You start to write without thinking. And you start to find it really difficult to work creatively.

I think that there are a lot of solutions to this problem but the one that makes the most sense to me is to take a sabbatical. I’d like to take a year off to just sit still and think about what it is that I want to do with writing for the rest of my life.

The fact is that I’ve always been a writer. I think I will always be a writer. But I’m not sure what that means. I don’t know if I want to write books or keep blogging or set some other writing goals for ten years down the line. I’m not sure if I want to write full-time forever or if I want to write part-time and then do some other creative work part-time. I may want to go back to school at some point.

The problem is that I don’t feel like I can make those decisions during a time when I’m still writing. I feel like I need to step back and take a breather. I need to put things in perspective. I need time to listen to what my own heart is actually saying without having to also hear the clatter of the keyboard.

So that’s my big goal – to take a one year sabbatical in order to be able to make some solid heartfelt decisions about where I want my writing to go from there.

I won’t actually be doing this for awhile. I have some other writing goals I want to meet first. And I have to put some financial things in place. But what I’m working on is a three-year plan. I’m hoping to work solidly at writing for the next three years and then to take the fourth year off.

What do you other writers out there think about this? Has anyone else taken a sabbatical from their writing career? Did it work for you? Would you like to do it?

When people ask me about how I became a writer, I try to find the most succinct method of describing the wandering path that led to getting paid to write full time. The truth is that I’ve always done writing in one form or another but I also kind of just fell into writing for pay.

I’ve been writing creatively for as long as I can remember. I have saved stories that I wrote in elementary school. I’ve kept journals since I was ten. I have started writing a few different novels over the years (although none are even close to being finished). And I always kind of thought that I’d like to “be a writer” (meaning author books) someday.

But when I actually started getting paid to write, it was because I needed an immediate income and writing is what I do best. I won’t lie; I got into writing by doing academic writing for other people. A lot of writers have an ethical issue with this. As for me, it was just a job. I wrote high school papers, college papers and even a few thesis papers. Students paid me to earn them A’s with my writing. This eventually led into working with so-called paper mills online.

I didn’t particularly like this work and it doesn’t pay that well but it helped lead me into full-time web writing. I learned how to do online writing and how to communicate via content management systems. this improved my resume enough to start getting online jobs writing SEO / keyword articles for various firms.

From there, it was just a matter of beefing up my resume with more and more experience. I started to apply to every writing job I could find because I needed the money. Some of the more interesting writing jobs I took on included:

• Writing horoscopes. I did this for a few different places but the first job was a job writing horoscopes for an Asian fashion magazine that only lasted a few issues before going out of business.
• Doing music reviews. I got to do CD reviews and live music reviews for a number of different online sites and even a print magazine (Skope). I actually didn’t enjoy this job very much although the perks of attending free live music were nice. And I did meet some cool musicians.
• Lots of “adult” writing. You’d be surprised how much money the adult industry pays to writers. I’ve done reviews of online and DVD porn. I’ve been a ghost writer for a porn blog supposed to be written by a young gay porn star. And I’ve written reviews of local strip clubs.

I also did a lot of slightly more legitimate writing including web content and writing articles for various magazines. Oh, and I wrote a couple of books as well.

These days, I make my money off of blogging for businesses. I don’t just write the blog content. I also promote it around the web using all of the social promotion tools available to writers. So I’m now basically working in the business of social media which involves doing some writing as well. It’s just another twist and turn on my writing path.

I’m working on some new writing goals for my future so this path is going to change once again. But I’m happy with where things are at for now. And I like that writing always changes!

Things have been quiet around here as I’ve been trying to re-work my writing life. It’s not the best idea to let a blog be quiet but I’m fairly comfortable with the ebb and flow of writing here on Real Words. That’s because Real Words is where I write about my writing life and my writing life is something that ebbs and flows. My experience with writing changes regularly and the changes in this blog reflect that.

I’ve got a better plan in mind for writing again so Real Words will be resuming normal posts now. However, you should know that I’ve been a lot more active on my other blog, Diary of a Smart Chick, than I have been here. And that I’ll continue to be very active over there.

Diary of a Smart Chick started as a place where I could gather the links to all of my other writing around the web. It continues to serve that purpose. What I do there is to write about the topics that I’m writing about elsewhere and link out to those original articles as appropriate. When you write for certain websites or clients, you have to stick to specific topics or points of view. Diary of a Smart Chick lets me expand on my thoughts about the topics I’m writing on for others.

I’ve also started two new daily features on Diary of a Smart Chick. I’m featuring a Photo of the Day every evening which showcases some of the playing around I do with my camera. I’m hoping to learn photo editinf software soon and to let the blog be a place where I can track the progress of that experience. And I am also featuring a Book of the Day each morning which is just a short description and my opinion of a book I’m reading or have read in the past.

I hope you’ll check out what I’m doing over there and give me some feedback even as posts resume here about writing.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been active on this blog. My activity here seems to go in spurts. The reasons for delays are many and varied, of course. Recently, there have been two big causes for being quiet on the blog. The first is that I ended up going out of town and didn’t have a lot of time to be online while I was gone. The other is that I’m working on a new writing schedule and I’m still trying to figure out where my personal blogs fit in to that.

I’ve got some new plans and goals for my writing life. I’m still in the planning stages of setting those goals. As I create them and commit to them, my need for a more efficient writing schedule is changing again.

Messing around with the schedule that I keep is something that I do regularly as a freelance writer. I do my best work in the morning so I try to get a lot done though. What “a lot” means changes, however, depending on whether I’m currently more focused on blogging, bigger writing projects or social promotion stuff. I also play around regularly with which 2-3 days off per week I want (weekends vs. weekdays is always a big questions for me). And finally, I’m hoping to take some extended vacations in the next couple of years so I’m trying to schedule for that as well.

The new schedule is almost worked out. When it’s ready, I’ll be back to writing regularly again here. And I’ll have a lot more to say about my specific goals and plans as a writer.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you about your thoughts on a writing schedule. Do you keep one? What’s the part of it that changes most often?