An Overlooked (but Essential) Way to Become More Productive

What does it take to be a successful freelancer? Yes, you have to be able to write well, market yourself, develop relationships with clients, manage your time, and stay focused. You may know that already. When I speak to would-be freelancers about making the transition from employee to business owner, though, I suggest that they commit to a regular exercise program, if they don't have one already. 

Writing is a sedentary job. And while using your brain is mentally draining, it requires little physical effort. I believe one of the reasons I’ve maintained a fairly high level of productivity (essential now that I freelance part-time) is that I’ve made working out a priority, even when I’m busy.

In my 30s, I ran five or six days a week. It was a great stress-reliever--at least until I started getting injured regularly. Now that I’m a 40-something, I need a more balanced fitness routine. I still run but not as often; I bike, lift weights, and do yoga. I try to make it to the gym four or five days a week. I know that after two or three days of nothing more physical than hauling my toddler around, my back gets stiff. I get cranky. I have trouble sleeping. I need the physical challenge and release of exercise to balance out the mental stress of work and life, so I make time for it.

Almost all of the most productive writers I know are dedicated athletes in some sense of the word. They run. They dance. They swim. They spin. They do yoga. They’ve figured out that a healthy body doesn’t just look and feel good; it makes for a more productive brain, too.

As a freelancer, I need my brain. And I need to work. Yet it's hard to shut that brain off. I’m always thinking about the assignments on my desk, encroaching deadlines, the amount of money I’m making, my plans for the next year, when I’m going to find time to write another novel, you name it. One of the rare times that I’m able to turn off the incessant mental chatter is when I’m standing on the pedals of a spin bike pushing through another two-minute sprint interval or trying to balance in triangle pose during yoga. Exercise that demands your full attention—I’m talking high-intensity, focused effort—shuts off your freelance brain, at least for a while. I need that.

            

A stroll around the block is better than nothing, but pushing yourself produces bigger benefits for your body and brain. Physical effort that causes discomfort also produces endorphins, which ease pain, decrease anxiety, and improve your mood. In other words, suffering (at least a small amount of it for a short period of time) is a good thing.

            

Rising to physical challenges makes you more able to handle mental challenges as well. The reason is what researchers call self-efficacy. Studies prove that mastering physical skills (whether it’s doing a headstand or successfully training to complete a 10K run) improve your self-efficacy, or your belief in your ability to perform a task. That self-efficacy bleeds into other areas as well, which means you’ll be more confident, not only in your writing skills, but in your ability to weather an ever-changing freelance landscape and to continue to grow and develop as a self-employed businessperson. That’s a sizable payoff for producing a little sweat on a regular basis.

Convinced yet? (Hey, remember I’m a personal trainer too, so hopefully I’ve made the case for exercise.) If you already work out, you know all of this is true. If you don’t, start. If you’re worried about time away from your business, count your workout time as work time. The productivity and stress relief that result from working out will more than make up for "lost time" at your desk.

**This post was drawn from Secret 87: Get (and stay) physical from my latest book, Writer for Hire: 101 Secrets to Freelance Success. Last chance to win a free copy of it by entering the giveaway here!  

And readers, weigh in. What's your usual workout regime? Do you find that getting physical makes you more productive? How so? 

Articles? Books? Why not Write Both?

Earlier this week I taught my Webinar on writing articles, and suggested that even book authors consider adding article-writing to their work mix. I've found that doing both helps boost your productivity and income instead of choosing to do only one alone. 

I started out as a freelancer writing for magazines and newspapers, segueing into writing books a few years into my career. Later I added ghostwriting and coauthoring to my work mix as I found that I could make more per-hour writing books with experts as opposed to authoring my own. Today, I've found that writing both articles and books makes me much more efficient and boosts my income.
            Part of the reason is that I retain as many rights as possible to my work. That means I can sell reprints to articles, which results in thousands of dollars’ worth of “free” money each year.
            But retaining rights to articles also means I can repurpose them as I see fit. So when I collaborated on a book with a client and wrote all of the fitness content, I had articles ranging from how to launch a walking program to staying motivated to exercise to using a heart rate monitor—all that I owned the rights to. As a result, I could use them for the book. Of course I still have to rework my content to fit the book, but it’s a lot easier than starting from scratch.

I’ve taken the same approach with the books I author under my own name, which makes me more efficient. When I sold Six-Figure Freelancing to Random House back in 2003, it garnered only a $15,000 advance. But I already had about 25 percent of the material for the book on my hard drive, from columns and articles I’d written for publications like The Writer. Repurposing that material meant writing the book took less time overall, boosting my hourly rate.

This double-dipping works in reverse, too. As I write a book, I often come up with ideas for articles. I may have to do some additional research and interview sources, but much of the background research is done, which saves me time. As a result, I can get paid for the book (through an advance) and for the articles it generates, which again boosts my overall hourly rate.          

There’s another reason to write articles, books, and even blog posts about the same or similar subject. Not only does it make you more efficient and boost your income, it also helps you develop a platform as a specialist in a particular area. (Yes, there’s irony at play here—while authoring a book helps create a platform, you need to already have a platform to sell your book to a traditional publisher. It’s a chicken-or-egg conundrum.)

Regardless, the most successful freelancers I know write both articles and books, creating a living out of checks of all sizes and projects that range from a few hundred words to 80,000-word manuscripts. Like me, they enjoy the challenge, satisfaction, and income that authoring both short- and long-form projects provide.

Starting out, you’re likely to be writing articles and other short pieces rather than books. That's totally normal. Just keep a book or two in the back of your mind. It may be a natural segue into another form that can produce income and increase your productivity as a freelancer. 

***Do you enjoy contemporary women's fiction? My latest novel, The Misery Index, is now available on Amazon, as well as on Kindle and Smashwords! If you enjoy this type of book, I hope you'll check it out. 

7 Ways to Survive a Deadline Crunch

I've posted before about time-saving strategies, and I'm using pretty much all of them right now. My sitter had to cut her hours, which means I've lost the majority of my dedicated work time. I have a big deadline before Christmas, and let's just say I'm a bit stressed. I'm relying on several strategies to be as productive as possible when I do have a sitter, or have a couple of hours at the Y to work:

• I always tackle the "ugliest" task of the day first. Usually that's drafting a chapter or a section of the book I'm ghostwriting. That takes the most mental energy and focus, and I find that both fade as the day goes on. 
• I TK everything I can. If I need a piece of information from my client, I'll send a quick email asking for it. If it's something more complicated that I need to research, I'll TK it and do the digging later. I don't want to burn my serious work time doing research I could do while watching TV in the evening. 
• I do lots of "prep work" (also known as WWYNRW) to take advantage of my work time. I'll print out a rough draft of a chapter I'm struggling with, read through it and make rough edits during Ryan's basketball practice--then the next morning, I can jump right in as soon as I open Word. 
• I map out not just the week, but the month. A couple of weeks ago, I sketched out the coming weeks, and planned what chapters I would write when, working in several other projects as well. It's a hellish schedule, but at least I have a plan. That alone made me feel better.  
• I keep a running list of everything on my plate (not just work-related), and I'm eliminating what I can. Our Christmas tree is up, but a holiday letter this year is looking less and less likely. I still have shopping to do, but my son will not be participating in the school science fair in January. I've been grabbing some dinners from Noodles & Co. and Panda Express instead of throwing something together at night. If I can cut it out of my schedule right now, it's getting cut.  
• I dangle a giant carrot in front of my nose. Most years I take the week between Christmas and New Year's off; so does my husband. We spend the week sleeping in (if the kids allow), doing stuff as a family, and sometimes tackling various projects at home. Last year, I was writing a book and two book proposals during that time. My clients'  deadlines meant that worked every day except Christmas and it stunk. From December 24 until January 2, I will be on vacation, and I'm going to enjoy it. As I slog through the next few weeks, I remind myself of that fact, and will be able to savor that time even more. At least that's the plan.
• I do take small chunks of time off. On Friday, I had my sitter stay an extra 90 minutes so I could get coffee and go to yoga. (Nothing like caffeinated yoga!) I can't even describe how much better--calmer, saner, less crazed--I felt afterwards. Tonight, I'll work for a while, and then knock off to watch a movie with my husband, who's in the midst of multiple deadlines himself. The small breaks I take translate into more productivity tomorrow.  

Of course, if you asked me how I feel about my current work situation, I would say, "it SUCKS!" And it does. But it's temporary, and survivable, and part of freelancing, alas. The feast-or-famine nature of the business, and how to address it, is a great topic for an upcoming post. Agree?  

6 Ways to Make the Most of your Workday

As writers, we’re all given the same 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. How you spend that time, however, will determine how productive you are—and how much income you can generate. Learn to maximize your time, and you’ll see a difference in both the amount of work you produce and what you collect from it. Here are six proven ways to get more out of your workday:

Make Lists
OK, I know you creative right-brain types are chafing at this request. But writing down what you need to do will make you more efficient. After you’ve got your list, prioritize your top three tasks for the day (or week, if appropriate.) I usually do this before I knock off work for the day. I figure out what the three biggest priorities for the next day are and then determine which is the "ugliest"--the one I most do not want to do--and do that first. Then I tackle the next two.

In addition to your "must-do" list, maintain a record of your ongoing projects. Some of these may not have firm deadlines, but you don’t want to forget about them because you’re distracted by what must be done today.

Protect your Work Time
Are you a morning person or a night owl? I’ve found that I write more quickly in the morning—in fact, the first few hours in the day are by far my most productive. So I devote my earliest morning hours for hard-core writing and save phone interviews, transcribing notes, researching and other tasks for later. If you know you fire up at night, on the other hand, plan to do your most demanding then.

Delete Distractions
Let me just say…no one needs to check their email every five minutes. But I'm guilty of doing that much of the time. If I have a deadline, I close my email program and keep it closed. Otherwise, I waste time reading email. Even if I don't reply to them right then, it's still a distraction that impacts my productivity.

Take Breaks
Research shows that the average person can only listen for forty-five to fifty minutes before his attention begins to flag. Take frequent breaks throughout your work day, and you’ll get more done. Even five or ten minutes away from the computer will help refresh you. I take a break every hour at the minimum, even if it’s just to toss in a load of laundry or check on my kids and their sitter.

Stay Focused
This is my biggest battle—I’m easily distracted. But if you get sidetracked easily, you’ll eat up time without producing any work. Say you’re researching a story, using Google to hunt for potential sources. You look up to discover 20 minutes have disappeared--and you still haven't identified who you need to interview. I’ll set my watch or use a timer and give myself a specific amount of time to research a topic so I don’t wind up spending my morning reading celebrity blogs.

Check your Head
While there are loads of tools out there to help you manage your time, the most important aspect is your mindset. You have to make it your goal to be more focused and accomplish more during your writing time. Once you do so, you’ll become aware of your biggest time traps—and happily, discover that many of them are easily overcome with some practice.

***Like my new blog header? Thanks to Nicole (nickiheart16@aim.com) for designing it. Get in touch with her if you're looking for an eye-catching design.

And special thanks to those of you who are buying my novels, now available as e-books! I received not one, but two fan emails in the past 24 hours, and am remembering why I love writing fiction. If you enjoy contemporary women's fiction (or know someone who does), I hope you'll check out Did you get the Vibe?, and White Bikini Panties--and please let me know what you think.

Guest Post from Sage Cohen, Author of The Productive Writer

Readers of my blog know that I'm all about making more money in less time--selling as much work to clients and working as efficiently as I can. I'm always trolling for new ideas to boost my productivity, and that means keeping up on the latest writing- and freelancing-related books.

Last year, Sage Cohen asked me to write a blurb for her book, The Productive Writer, and I was happy to do so. The Productive Writer is aimed at writers of all stripes--not just freelancers--but Cohen has plenty of great tips, strategies, and suggestions for boosting your output regardless of what kind of work you do.

She also graciously provided this guest post:

Practice Deliberately (And Hit Your Target)
A guest post by author Sage Cohen

“The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call ‘deliberate practice.’ It’s activity that’s explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one’s level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.

For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don’t get better. Hitting an eight-iron three hundred times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day—that’s deliberate practice.”—Geoffrey Colvin, senior editor-at-large, Fortune Magazine

Have you ever gotten halfway through a piece of writing and found yourself floundering about what you were actually trying to accomplish in the first place? This is where the concept of deliberate practice comes in. When you set your sights on specific goals for a piece of writing, then you’ll know exactly how close you come to achieving your goal.

Try writing out as many of these details at the top of your piece, or on a Post-It note that you attach to your computer screen or your working file folder. For example, I wrote this at the top of a recent piece I’d been contracted to write:

• Target word count: 1,500
• To appear in: Poet’s Market 2012
• Audience: Aspiring poets with varying levels of publishing experience
• Topic: Why Poets Need Platforms and How to Create One

I challenge you to name and claim the key objectives of every piece of writing, even a blog post, short story, essay, or poem, regardless of whether you’ve been hired to write it or if you ever intend to share it. Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Choose a listener When you know the audience you are writing for, you can start to imagine their needs, questions, objections, and level of interest. The simplest way to define this audience is by choosing a single person who is representative of this group, and write it “for them.” Maybe this person can even be available to read and give feedback about your work, to help you learn if it was received as you intended.

2. Name the objective of what you are writing If you are writing on assignment or for a client, this is where you’d articulate exactly what goals you’ve been hired to accomplish. If you are writing something for a themed contest or publication, define the topic or parameters within which you must perform. And if you are writing creative nonfiction, poetry, or fiction that is not driven by particular submission requirements, try setting your own standard for what you expect this piece to do/be/accomplish and then observe if this makes a difference in your writing and revising experience.

3. Write! You know everything you need to know about this, already! [This is the sound of me shaking my pom-poms.]

4. Revise! Anyone who’s ever spent years revising a single piece of writing knows all too well what hitting an eight-iron three hundred times might be like. Now, get out there and start swinging.

5. Evaluate whether you have achieved your objective When your piece feels finished, revisit the goals articulated in numbers one and two, and see how your writing measures up. If there are discrepancies, return to number four, and then repeat. If you didn’t hit the mark the first time, don’t worry. Remember, this is all practice. And the only way we improve is through repetition. Practice shapes us, so we can most effectively give shape to our writing.

[Excerpted from The Productive Writer by Sage Cohen]

About Sage Cohen
Sage Cohen is the author of two nonfiction books, The Productive Writer and Writing the Life Poetic, and the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World. She blogs at pathofpossibility.com, where you can download a free "Productivity Power Tools" workbook companion to The Productive Writer and sign up for the free, 10-week email series, "10 Ways to Boost Writing Productivity."

**Thanks so much to Sage for this blog post. I agree that practice makes, if not perfect, at least a lot better. My early queries were tragic and rarely sold, but with time I mastered the form and started getting more assignments. Same goes for articles, book proposals, essays, even novels--the more you write, and the more practice you accumulate, the stronger your work becomes. Readers, do you agree?

A Five-Step Method for Pitching--and Selling--Reslants

Earlier this week, I talked about reslanting story ideas to take advantage of the information that’s already in your head, in your story files, and on your hard drive, reducing the amount of time you spend researching the subject. But if you’re a one-idea=one-story writer, you may have to make an extra effort to come up with reslants the first few times you do it.

I suggest you brainstorm from the outset. Give it a try:

1. Write down your initial article idea.

2. Write down the angle you’re pitching (or writing for), the market(s), and the readers of those markets.

3. Now, think of what other approaches you could take to the subject—and who might be interested in your new pitches. Does the topic and angle appeal to parents? Alumni of a certain school? Frequent travelers? Business owners? Homeowners? Recreational athletes? Seniors? Make notes of your different spins for different audiences.

4. Research potential markets that reach those audiences. Again, think broadly—in addition to national consumer magazines, consider trade publications, regional/local markets, and online publications. Even if some of these markets don’t pay well, a reslant that takes little time to report and write may still well worth your time.

5. Write and send queries to the appropriate markets with your reslanted ideas.

That's it! If you get in the habit of doing this exercise whenever you come up with a new story idea, you may be surprised at how many different approaches you can take, even with a seemingly narrow topic. And if you don’t come up with other approaches at the outset, keep your mind open--your research may lead to additional ideas as you work on the original piece.

Welcome to 2011: A Month's Worth of Templates

Happy 2011! Regular readers of my blog know I'm all about working as efficiently as possible...as least most of the time. When I set my business goals for 2011, I included an overall financial goal, a daily financial goal (a/k/a the "daily nut"), and an hourly-rate goal. The latter two goals--making a minimum amount each day, and averaging a certain per-hour rate--are what help me meet my "big" goal, my annual income.


To hit my daily nut and my hourly rate, I need to work fast whenever I can. One way I do so is by using templates. I don't want to have to recreate the wheel every time I write a query, send a follow-up email, pitch a new client, or write up an invoice for a reprint sale. So I have a stash of templates I use, which save me time both marketing and running my business.


So, January will be a month of templates as well as resolutions. Tune in for samples you can use and adapt for your own freelance business in the weeks to come.


A special thanks to my readers who have bought my books on writing...all, especially Goodbye Byline, Hello Big Bucks: The Writer's Guide to Making Money Ghostwriting and Coauthoring Books, which is selling steadily. I'll announce another ghostwriting e-class in the next month.


I hope 2011 is your best year of freelancing yet!

What Markets Pay--and How to Make More Money Regardless

My second post on this blog was about money—and why writers should talk about it. Information is power, after all—and if you don’t know what other writers are making, how do you know what to charge?

Markets vary, but here are some average rates to keep in mind:

Print markets
National magazines: $1-2/word+
Trade magazines: $.25-50/word
Regional magazines: $0.10-50/word
Custom magazines: $0.50-$1/word+

Online markets
Blogs: $25+/blog post or $0.50/word+
Website copy $0.25-.50/word

Books (including ghostwriting)
Book proposals $4,500-10,000+
Full-length books $10,000-35,000+ (+royalties, in some cases)

Other work
Consulting $100/hour+
Editing $50/hour+
Teaching (six-week online class) $100-200/student

Note that when it comes to print markets, I don't worry about dollars/word, but dollars/hour. I'm no longer doing a lot of feature-length pieces for national magazines the way I did early on in my freelance career, and most of the articles I do don't pay that well per-word. But because they're relatively easy to research and write (and involve minimal editing/rewriting hassles), my hourly rate on them stays high. For example, if I spend a total of four hours researching and writng a piece that pays $500 (which isn't unusual for the service journalism stories I churn out), that's an hourly rate of $125. Not bad at all.

That being said, I'll tell you that this year has been a tough one, workwise. I lost a book deal I was counting on at the last minute. I had a project that paid a mere $10,000 expand in scope and eat up much of the first five months of the year. I only had a handful of speaking gigs this year, and my biggest project (a book I'm ghostwriting) paid only $13,500--less than half of what I was paid for a similar book several years ago. I've had to drop my rates for book proposals to far less than I used to charge.

But here's the thing. I can't control what a client can afford, or is willing to pay me. But I can control how I spend my time--and after fourteen years of experience, I've learned how to work as efficiently as possible:

I reslant just about every story I write about.

I sell reprint rights.

I write articles and books about the same subject so I get more mileage from my work.

I ghostwrite books for clients which means I no longer have to spend time selling the book once it's published.

I speak professionally, which raises my profile, adds to my bottom line, and sells books.

Get the idea? There are things you can control and things you can't. You may have no say over what markets pay you (other than deciding whether to work for them) or you may be unable to negotiate the amount of money you want when working with a client. But you, and you alone, are the boss of your time. Master it, spend it well, and you'll be more successful as a freelancer.

Double-Dip Technique #4, Take Two: Write More than One Related Article at a Time

Last post I talked about one of my double-dipping techniques—pitching more than one similar article at a time to different (and non-competing) markets. Which leads to a logical question: What happens when two or more stories are assigned at the same time?

This isn’t as much of a problem as it might appear at first glance. As you learned in my earlier post, because I pitched to noncompeting markets, the audiences for my articles—the readers of those magazines—are quite different. Chicago Parent is aimed, not surprisingly, at Chicago-area moms and dads of children. Complete Woman’s readers are women in their 20s to mid-40s who are looking for articles about love, sex, health, beauty, diet, fitness, career, and finances.

So I wrote two completely different articles about social media. One described what parents need to know about social media, focusing on how Chicago-area parents are using it to socialize, keep up on children’s health issues, and create a new online neighborhood of sorts. It included a sidebar about whether you should “Friend” your teen on Facebook.

The piece for Complete Woman focused on the dos and don’ts of using social media as a dating tool, exploring issues like what a man’s online profile may reveal about him. My sidebar focused a woman who had connected with a former classmate through social media—and married him! (Readers love happy endings.)

Get the idea? The very heart of the idea-harnessing social media—was the same. But the angles, the sources, the approaches, and the overall articles were very different. Yet because I knew the difference between Facebook and Myspace and could define a Tweet by researching the first article, the second look little time to write.

So, to double-dip this way without writing the same story twice, use this five-step process:

1. Consider the markets you're writing for (and their audiences) and create a slant specifically for each.
2. Use different expert sources whenever possible. (If you must reuse a source, get fresh quotes that are relevant to the specific story angle.)
3. Use a different structure for each story.
4. Find new “real people” to include as anecdotes.
5. Write different sidebars that complement each story.

That’s it! These five steps will let you write about the same subject more than once—without writing the same thing twice--or upsetting an editor.

Readers, weigh in. What do you think of this double-dipping technique? Do you use it already? Will you use it in the future? My inquiring mind wants to know!

Double-Dip Technique #4: Pitch Two (or More) Articles at Once

How do I make the most of my limited time as a freelancer? First off, I almost never write about the same story once--I reslant everything I can. Take the evergreen topic of changing the way you eat to lose weight. I’ve covered it with the following angles:

• How eating breakfast can help you lose weight.
• How eating more fiber can help you lose weight.
• How eating more low “GI” (glycemic index) foods can help you lose weight.
• How eating more fruits and vegetables can help you lose weight.
• How eating more protein can help you lose weight.
• How using smaller plates and bowls can help you lose weight.

That’s six ways of reslanting the same basic ideas and I remembered and wrote them down in less than a minute. Yet I wrote those stories at different times. An even more efficiently way to reslant, and one of my favorite ways to "double-dip" is to pitch two very similar ideas to different markets at the same time. As long as they’re not competing markets, you’re fine even if they both get assigned.

Here's an example. Earlier this year, I decided I wanted to write about social media. Number one, I knew next to nothing about it—and needed to figure out what the heck it was. Why not get paid to do so? Number two, one of my good friends had just written a book that discussed social media and I knew I could use her for a source (and plug her book as well). And number three, just about everyone I know wastes time on Facebook and Twitter, so I figured it was a timely topic.

I pitched the idea to two of my regular markets—Chicago Parent and Complete Woman. Because I write for both of them frequently, a short pitch is all I need. Here’s the relevant section of each of the queries I sent:

Dear Tamara:

OK, you asked for some ideas for May and beyond…I’m focusing on the CP reader as woman *and* as a mom, not just as a parent, as I have in the past. Those are the pieces that interest me the most…

1. [Pitch omitted]

2. Your Online Identity: What Social Media (and How You Use it) Says About You. Millions of us log into Facebook, Myspace, and Linkedin every day, but is the use of social media helping or hurting your social life? I’ll interview a couple of experts about this subject (including Sharon Cindrich) and talk about how social media can help support your IRL (In Real Life) friendships as well as how to know when you’re going overboard with it. I’d also like to take a fun look at what certain things say about you (i.e. your choice of profile photo, types of posts, etc). I think this would be a fun yet informative piece, with a sidebar on the most popular social media sites. Again, I’m thinking 1200 words.

3. [Pitches 3 and 4 and rest of query omitted]

And here's the pitch I sent to Complete Woman:

Hi, Stephanie!

Great to hear from you…here are a couple of ideas for you and Bonnie to consider:

Your Online Identity: What Social Media Says About You

Hooked on Myspace? Spend half your day on Facebook? This piece will describe how women use Facebook, Myspace, and other forms of social media, and what their use of social media says about them. (For example, your choice of profile picture, type of posts you make, what types of people you connect with online, and how often you check in with social media all give clues to your personality—and that of your friends as well.) I’ll interview at least one expert on this timely subject and interview several “real women” for the piece, which will be a fun look at this ubiquitous technology. I estimate 1000 words for this light yet informative piece but that’s flexible depending on your needs. (I’ll also give readers an idea of how to interpret potential romantic candidates’ FB and myspace pages as well…and what to look for in a promising guy as well as “red flags.”)

[Pitch 2 and rest of query omitted]

Note the similarity and yet differences of the queries? Both sold, by the way, so next post we’ll talk about writing two articles about the same topic at the same time, a continuation of this double-dipping theme. In the meantime, if you want more queries that sold--from both me and other successful freelancers, check out Ready, Aim, Specialize! Create your own Writing Specialty and Make More Money, second edition, or Six-Figure Freelancing: The Writer's Guide to Making More Money.

Your Daily Nut--And How to Track It

I often talk about dollars/hour as being a more accurate reflection of what a project is worth than dollars/word. But there’s another figure freelancers should keep in mind: what I call their daily nut.

The daily nut is the amount you have to average to meet your annual income goal.

Say your annual income goal is $60,000 (and remember that one-quarter of freelancers surveyed make $60,000+), and you're planning to work 240 days out of the year. That's Mondays through Fridays, with four weeks off for holidays and vacations.

Grossing $60,000 a year comes to $5000 a month, or $250 a day. So your daily nut is $250. Instead of thinking about making $60,000, which can seem unreachable, focus on meeting your daily goal—and then track your progress.

Every day, you should average your daily nut, or you won’t hit your financial goal at year's end. So, an article that pays $1,000 should take you about four days' worth of work. A book proposal that pays $4500 should take about 18 days' worth of work, total. Of course, not every project will work out exactly like this--some will take more time, some will take less. The idea, though, is that you average a certain amount each day.

So, question one, what's your daily nut? And question two, did you make it today?

Double-Dip Technique #2: Write Articles and Books

I started out as a freelancer writing for magazines and newspapers, seguing into writing books a few years into my career. Later I added ghostwriting and coauthoring to my work mix. I've found that writing both articles and books makes me much more efficient and boosts my income.

Here’s the thing: I retain as many rights as possible to my work. That means I can sell reprints to articles, which results in thousands of dollars’ worth of “free” money each yeah.

But retaining rights to articles also means I can repurpose them as I see fit. So when I collaborated on a book with a client and wrote all of the fitness content, I had articles ranging from how to launch a walking program to staying motivated to work out that I owned the rights to and could use for the book. Of course I still have to rework my content to fit the book, but it’s a lot easier than starting from scratch.

Authoring articles and books about the same subject saves you time, and helps build your platform as a specialist in a particular area. When I sold my book Six-Figure Freelancing to Random House back in 2003, it garnered only a $15,000 advance. But I already had about 25 percent of the material for the book on my hard drive, from columns and articles I’d written for publications like The Writer, which meant writing the book took less time overall.

This double-dipping works in reverse, too. As I write a book, I often come up with ideas for articles. Again, I have to do some additional research and interview sources, but much of the background research is done, which saves me time. That's why writing articles and books is another of my favorite ways to double-dip.

Swim Like a Shark: The Time-Boosting Impact of TK

I’m going to let you in on one of my biggest time-saving strategies. When you're writing a first draft, I want you to swim like a shark.

If you've seen the movie Annie Hall, you may already know what I mean. There’s a scene near the end of the movie where lovers played by Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are on a plane, returning to Manhattan from Hollywood. Allen’s character realizes the relationship is over, explaining to Keaton: “A relationship, I think, is like a shark, you know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.”

What does this mean for writers? Keep moving. Keep writing. Don’t let yourself get blocked or stopped while you’re writing a draft—you’ll lose valuable time, momentum, and motivation. Can’t think of the right word? Need to add a statistic, quote, or example? Use the old editor’s “TK” trick. If you get stuck, type the letters “TK” and keep going. The TK means “to come;” it’s basically shorthand for “fix this before we go to print.” Then, when you edit your initial draft, you can fix the TKs. (The letters TK don’t appear together in any word in English, which makes it easy to locate them by using the “find” function in Word.)

Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser novels, used to say, “I can’t edit a blank page.” Get the words down. Write what Anne Lamott would call a shitty first draft. Just get the words on the screen—you can fix it and clean it up and make it beautiful later.

My shark-swimming tendency makes me a faster draft writer, and for me, the first draft is the hardest part of any piece of writing. Ease up on your perfectionist tendencies, if you have them, and just keep writing—and swimming. You’ll boost your productivity and your bottom line.

p.s. Did any readers notice that my last post, on writers’ mistakes, was about mistake #4? It should have been #5...I've corrected it. You’ve got to appreciate the irony!

Counting the Minutes: Why you Should Track your Time

Your biggest asset as a writer is your time, but most freelancers have no idea of how they spend theirs. And if you don't know how you're spending your time, you don't know what your average hourly rate is, which is a strong indicator of your productivity.

Consider this: you accept an assignment that pays $500. Say you spend 10 hours researching and writing it. You make $50/hour on that piece. But if you wind up spending 20 hours researching the story and another 15 writing it, you’re making less than $15/hour!

That’s why I suggest newer freelancers create a timesheet for each of their assignments. Each time you work on the piece, make an entry on it, like so:

Assignment: IGA profile ($600/1200 words, due April 20)

Date/Task/Time (in hours)

April 4/Background research/1.5
April 6/Research & arrange interview/1.0
April 9/Interview & transcribe notes/1.75
April 12/Draft story/2.0
April 14/Revise draft/0.75
April 15/Proof & turn in/ 1.0

My timesheet reveals that I spent 8 hours on this relatively simple one-source piece. That means I made $75/hour—not bad. If I have to revise the piece, I’ll add the time on, which brings my overall rate down. (If I had pitched this idea, I’d include query-writing time as well as that is part of the "cost" of the assignment.)

Use this method to track your writing time. (Software like Traxtime makes it even easier.) You'll soon discover which assignments are most lucrative—and which take more time than they're worth.

Five Ways to Work While You're Not Really Working

Confused by the title of this post? Let me explain. I've been self-employed long enough to know that there's working...and then there's working. The latter means that I'm chained to the computer. I don't check email. I don't answer the phone. I don't log in to Facebook. I just pound out the words on the keyboard and get as much done as quickly as I can.

However, most of my work time is the former...when I'm working, yes, but not with that intensity. Yeah, I'm working, but I break up the time with other things. I check my email. I read adoption.com forums. I check my Amazon ranking. I throw in a load of laundry and stop downstairs to say hi to my kiddos. I take a lunch break. I screw around.

But there's a third category of "work," too, which I call WWYNRW, or Working When You're Not Really Working. WWYNRW is what I call it when I watch reruns of America's Next Top Model or Chopped with my laptop on my lap. While WWYNRW isn't actual "work time," I use it to do things I might not have time for during my work hours--and that makes those work hours more productive. Here are five things I do during WWYNRW time:

1. Scout for reprint markets. I make between $5,000 and $10,000 a year selling reprints to regional publicitions, specialty magazines, foreign publications, and other markets. The majority of them I find through Google; I then send a brief LOI to the relevant editor. A five-minute investment may pay off with a new reprint market.

2. Touch base with my regulars. I'll scan through my email, and send a "just checking in" note to editors I haven't worked with in a few months. I just did this last week and sold a reprint for $200, plus have the promise of more work from several other clients.

3. Search on Medline for the latest journal articles on a specific topic--say, sleep and health. I did this several days ago and incorporated new research into a query, which I wrote the next morning. It's already been assigned.

4. Send "FU" (that's for Follow-Up, not what you're thinking!) emails on queries I haven't had a response on, giving editors a week or two to reply...and make a note of where to resub, or resubmit the query next. Then I'm ready to strike if the editor doesn't respond.

5. Brainstorm blog posts. I don't like to burn worktime to come up with and write blog posts, so I do most of my social networking stuff in front of the TV...or while at the pool. In fact, I came up with this post idea while watching my son do cannonballs off of the diving board!

What about you? Do you work, work, and WWYNRW?