Mistakes Were Made: How 2012 Will Look Different Than 2011

Last post, I shared what I grossed in 2011, and that I failed to meet my income goal. That was a bummer. However, I spent the last week of 2011 revisiting my career, reevaluating my goals, and creating a new plan for 2012, so I know what happened last year. I've written about freelance mistakes before, but that doesn't mean I never make them myself. So here are my "top 5" reasons I failed to meet my 2011 income goal:

1. Too-positive thinking. In other words, I counted my proverbial chickens before they hatched. Early in 2011, I coauthored a book proposal for a client that our agent shopped around. I was certain that the book would command an advance of at least $20,000-30,000 (hopefully more!) and planned accordingly. Well, the only offer we got was for a whopping $4,000, and my client was unwilling to throw anything else in the pot. So I wound up in the spring with no book project. I'm a positive person, but in 2012, I'll be more realistic in my expectations.
2. No backup plan. The book proposal I mentioned above? Remember, I was certain it would sell to a traditional publisher, so I didn't look for any other book projects to take on because I didn't want to have too much work on my plate at once. (I'd spent three months before that busting my butt because I'd overloaded myself before and during the holidays.) Instead, I was left with no book and no backup work--which made a definite dent in my bank account. This year, I have backup plans for when I have too much work, and too little work.  
3. Significant life change. For my family, 2011 was the Year of the Move. We prepped, painted, staged, and cleaned the house we'd lived in for 13 years to get it ready to sell. That was a huge time commitment that took a lot of time away from my career. Then, we had to find a house to buy (long story, but it took several months) and then actually move all of our belongings, our two children (and all of their belongings!), both of our home offices, our golden retriever, and everything else we owned from our house and the storage facility into our new house...and unpack it all. (I confess, I still have a ways to go on that--but I'll get there eventually.) I know our move hurt my career, but now that we're in our "20-Year House," I don't have to worry about this in 2012.
4. Lower-paying work. I've seen advances fall over the last few years, and the book projects I took in 2011 paid less than I would have liked. Here's the thing--I can try to negotiate for more money, but sometimes I'm in the position of saying "yes" to a project I want for less money than I'd like or saying "no" and having no work. (Remember, most of my work these days are sizable projects like ghostwritten books, so I tend to take on one or two gigs at a time. When I had a dozen or more articles under contract at any given time, this was less of an issue.) I can't always control how much money I get for a gig, but I can make an effort to negotiate more money for the work I do in 2012. And I will.
5. Inconsistent marketing. I should know better, but I admit that when I was busy, I wasn't marketing myself. Then I'd come up for air to discover I had no big project waiting for me. Yeah, I know better! But I'm sharing this so you know that even experienced freelancers make dumb mistakes sometime. This year, I'm already marketing myself more consistently and I hope I'll have a steadier workload as a result. If not? Well, then I've got my backup plan to keep me going.

**Readers, what about you? Did life circumstances or other causes keep you from meeting your income goal? Feel free to share them here--and how you plan to tackle them in 2012. And if you haven't done so, please take my quick, confidential 2012 Freelance Income Survey, and ask other freelancers to do the same. We've garnered 85 responses already but I'm shooting for at least 250 this time around. Thank you!

Have a Backup Plan: Five Tips Especially for Freelancing Parents

I hope you enjoyed my five-part "Blast from The Past" series last week. I'll repeat it in the future so you can see what hasn't worked and why. Today's post is especially for freelancing parents, and was inspired by a sick sitter crisis last week:

Sure, I believe in planning my day. But often those plans go awry. Then what?

Say you get an urgent call from a client who needs edits on a piece you finished weeks ago--and he needs it today. Or you were supposed to conduct a critical interview for a profile you’re writing, and now your source has gone AWOL. Or my favorite (not really)--you’re a parent with a sick kid, or a sick babysitter.

As a working parent, I’ve faced the sick kid/sick babysitter scenario multiple times--including three days a week where my sitter was home with the flu. I may not have been quite as productive those days, but I’ve tried multiple techniques to parent and work simultaneously--and have never missed a deadline as a result. I have:

• Let my son watch TV. As in, as many episodes of Blue’s Clues, Dora the Explorer, or Top Gear (depending on his age) as he wants. A day or two of Ryan gazing open-mouthed at the “magic box” isn’t going to kill him.

• Allowed my toddler-aged daughter play with forbidden "toys." Unlike her brother, Haley isn’t interested in TV yet. She loves, however, playing with anything she’s not supposed to have. So I get out my office supplies (padded envelopes are a fave of hers), an outdated cell phone, an old remote control--anything that looks like a "no-no" and is therefore fascinating--and let her go nuts. It’s good for ten to fifteen minutes of work time before I find something else for her.

• Made the most of nap time. While it’s a lot harder to entertain a toddler than an older kid, toddlers still nap. So when she goes down, I use that 90 minutes or so to write as much as I can after a quick check of my email. An encroaching deadline makes me write even faster.

• Gotten out of the house. Haley is still too young to run around the park without me keeping a close eye on her, but before she was born, I would take Ryan to the park or to a McDonald’s play land and tuned out the screaming children while I worked. I actually wrote the draft of this post at the YMCA while my kids played in the Strong Kids Zone, the Y’s babysitting room.

• Called on a friend. When I’m truly desperate, I will call one of my fellow moms and ask to dump my kids on them for a few hours. This is a last resort, but I know I can if I must. (And I’m willing to return the favor. I can watch my friends’ kids whether I’m working or not. Normally when I’m working, my sitter is here. So she does the child-tending. Otherwise, I’m in mommy-mode anyway so a few additional children doesn’t make a difference to me. Any mom of more than one child will tell you the same thing.)

Get the idea? Crises will arise, and the more children or family responsibilities you have, the more of them you’ll encounter. Be a Boy Scout, and be prepared to make your day work, however you can. You can make up for your lost productivity tomorrow.