New Year, New You
Yea, we all do it. We make resolutions during the shiny hours of a new year, but somewhere around March, things are back to status quo. So why bother making resolutions? Because at least it’s a step in the right direction. So go on – make your resolutions. It’s a confirmation of where you are and where you want to be. Check out Kristen King’s blog for links to scores of great resolutions for writers.

Keeping them is another matter. Perhaps that takes a change in perspective. If you want to sell that book this year or work toward a monetary goal, that’s going to take a bit more work. So as you make those resolutions, map them out on your work schedule as tasks you need to perform in order to reach that goal. Let’s say you want to make $5K a month. Fine, but how are you going to do it? Start with a few projects you know you will have coming in, or ones you know you can score easily. Perhaps you can write three articles a month and bring in $1,500 doing so. Okay, so how are you making up the rest? Try taking on press release writing or website copy writing. Hook up with your local printing house (and no matter where you are, you have at least one within fifty miles). Get them to feed writing work to you (you’d be surprised how often printers are asked to perform writing work). Take on some onsite temporary assignments. Write collateral material for trade shows. Ad advertising links to your website. Write weblogs for money. Take on a company’s newsletter (or convince them they need one).

No matter what you do, make sure you’re mapping out just how you’ll reach that goal. Then maybe those resolutions can really work for you.

Happy 2007!