My website www.expandingcreations.com offers online training courses and resources for freelance writers.

I am busy! I currently have a full time job, a part-time job (my passion of writing), and am setting up a business to allow me to write and train others in writing full time (when I leave my job at the end of the month). Meanwhile, I am desperately trying to find time to write for my current customers who will be the mainstay of my business when I go full-time as a freelancer in March. I am also trying to spend some time with my husband who is usually going to bed alone, muttering “I’m a computer widow”, while I continue to tap away on the keyboard.

Yep, life is extremely busy for me at the moment and that got me thinking about how I manage my time as a freelancer. I can’t just assume all the work is just going to happen (no, I don’t own a magic wand that I can wave and just have the work done in an instant, nor does my godmother have fairy powers, and no matter how often I rub that lamp, no genie has yet appeared), so I have to figure out ways to manage my time and make time for the important things.

I’ve figured out a few tricks that might help you if you have time management issues too.

Make and keep a list of your current tasks. Prioritise each task according to its importance. How you figure out what is important is whole other blog, but it’s up to you. Figure out your priorities. Include things on the list like spending time with the important people in your life (socialising activities), time out for yourself (and exercise), and the work and other (housecleaning) tasks you have to do on a regular basis. Then prioritise your list – for me, housecleaning ALWAYS comes last!

 Don’t plan every minute of the day, but allocate tasks to each day in a kind of daily to do list. Don’t think you can work every single minute – it just won’t happen, so allocate a reasonable amount of work you can achieve in the time you have available that day. If you know you are going out for a lunch (that will take up most of the afternoon as you chat), don’t plan 10 hours of writing on that day. You may find it helpful to allocate tasks at the start of the week for the whole week and then update daily.

Figure out your own body clock and when you are most productive. Plan to get most of your work done at those times. Plan tasks that are less important or less urgent in the times you are less active. For me, I work best in the afternoons (or at least after 10am when my brain has really had time to wake up), so I try to write then. That’s when my creative juices are really flowing. I usually check my emails early in the morning and plan my day, so I can get my brain thinking about the writing I have to do, as a running commentary in the back of my head, while I do the more mundane tasks of administration. Then I work actively from 10am until about 10pm* with a few breaks for lunch, dinner and relaxation. (*at the moment, but hopefully it will be more like 7pm in the near future).

Working when my brain is most active means that I can achieve a lot more writing in the time. When I try to write when I am too tired, I find the words don’t make much sense and I can spend an hour trying to find the right phrase for a sentence. When I am full of energy, the words just flow from my brain to my fingers and onto the page. And yes, I wrote this blog after 10am!

Hope this helps you find time to enter submissions for all those lovely jobs Dawn keeps posting!

 Hayley

http://www.expandingcreations.com

Last year, after quite a lot of soul searching, I made the decision to pursue a freelance writing career.  I was happy now have a career path to pursue.  Enthusiastic and ready to begin my journey, I sat down at my lap-top computer and pounded out a two page business plan and goals for the year.

As the year started, I was a little nervous but ambitious. I sent out my first set of article queries and hoped to hear something form someone. I heard about a few online writing groups that would publish my work. Miss-guided I signed up for them. Was I published online? Yes. Have I seen any monetary pay outs for them? No and I doubt I will for these.

Is it discouraging? Of course it is. Will I give up? Of course not! A side from my family, writing is my pride and joy.  Rejection of any kind is discouraging but as writers we can’t give up.Persist with your writing and it will pay off.

As this year draws to a close, I have been re-evaluating the goals and objectives I have set. I now realise that I bit off more than I could chew. I had written goals that suited a full time writer. Too ambitious for a beginner such as I? Yes.

This year, I narrowed my goals down to what I could accomplish. I limited myself to three attainable goals instead of the seven I had last year.

I admit I was a bit too ambition for a Newbie, especially this stay at home mom of two boys under 5 years old. When it comes time for you to set out your writing goals, always remember the KIS method.. KEEP IT SIMPLE.

Wishing you all the greetings of the Season, most especially Merry Christmas.

Allison

Everyone who visits this website has a love of writing; whether it is journalistic, in depth feature style articles, short stories, novels, or poetry, writing is a pleasure that satisfies a deep part of our souls. Yet, not everyone who has a love of writing can write well – yet!

Writing is a craft that takes a lifetime to learn, refine, and enjoy before you become a true master. Even the most famous authors suffer through personal doubts, changes from editors, rejections from publishers, and criticism from readers. This is part of the process of writing.

You can write only for yourself and avoid some of the rejections or criticisms, but if you do this you will miss half of the joy of real writing. Writing is a method of communication that allows one heart to speak to another, and without a reader, the path of communication becomes useless. Much of the joy that comes from writing stems from the reader feedback – when someone reads your work and says “That touched me, made me laugh, made me cry, or made me want to dance for joy in the rain.”

So, as 2009 draws to a close and we all dust off the New Year’s resolutions that we dropped back in January (or if we were really good in February), I have a suggestion for every writer here. Instead of setting yourself goals about how much you going to write, try thinking about how well you are going to write. Make at least one resolution to work on improving and refining your craft of writing. Aim for quality, rather than quantity, and resolve to learn more of the craft of writing in 2010.

I am excited to become part of the blogging family here at newbie writers. If you want to read more articles about the craft of writing, visit my website: http://www.expandingcreations.com

HayleyWriter