Now, if you are a full-time writer, don’t stop reading. Chances are you could use a little help focusing your writing time on the most effective tasks, too.

Gretchen Roberts is a full-time mom and a part-time writer, yet she brings in a full-time income. I’ve heard of other writers who manage this, including Linda Formichelli. In Full-Time Income in Part-Time Hours, Roberts gives you quick tips you can implement to increase your income without increasing your work hours.

I read this book in one night, and in a lot of cases, I consider that a problem. For this book, though, it is a testament to its concise nature and focus on helping time-strapped writers.

In her 22 tips, Roberts offers some that go against the typical advice for writers. One that made me do a Scooby-Do-style “Huh?” was not to go after reprints. Typically, writers love to sell reprints to increase the amount of income they generate from a single article. Roberts argues, however, that the time spent on marketing reprints could instead be spent on generating higher-income assignments. Total income for the year is the most important factor.

Many freelance writers figure that they need to earn at least $100 per hour to make a living. For a part-time writer, that per hour rate is even higher. If you put in 20 hours a week, you need to net $200 per hour. If you are in the 15-hour range, even more. This means that you not only need to be fast, but that you also need to spend your time chasing big bucks and fast assignments rather than the pittance you can make on reprints.

Roberts has written a fast-reading book with easily implementable business advice for writers who have limited time to devote to writing or who just want to amp up their income without amping up their hours. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Buy your copy from Amazon: Full-Time Income in Part-Time Hours: 22 Secrets to Writing Success in Under 40 Hours a Week

The Business of Writing

Should Publishers Delay E-book Releases?
This was big story this week, as publishers reported that they would try to save paper publishing by delaying important e-book releases. Agent Nathan Bransford explains the flaws in the logic and looks at the issue from the reader’s perspective.

Digital ARCs Make Progress
Novelist L.J. Sellers looks at the move toward digital review copies. How will that affect writers.

Backlist Title Dilemma
How should authors deal with their less than stellar backlist releases? Shrug and hope their loyal readers see the progress they have made? Remove all poorly written pieces from circulation?

Seth’s Promotion
Bob Lefsetz distills Seth Godin’s book promotion wisdom into an instructive post.

Craft

How to Turn Off the Internet While Writing on Your Computer
Have you struggled with the lure of Twitter, Facebook, and Google while you write? Other than turning off the wireless card or unplugging the Ethernet cable, how do you get down to writing rather than surfing? This post points you to some technology solutions that help you keep your focus.

Tips for Self-Editing Burnout
Editor Kathryn Craft provides solid advice to get you through your self-editing projects.

Fiction

The Written Word: Mining for Ideas
John Roundtree helps you mine your life for ideas.

Time, Dimension, Backstory, and Keeping Your Story Short
Kimberly Davis gives great advice to help you create fully developed characters without bogging the story down with backstory.

Freelancing

Why I Canceled My Subscription
Freelance writer Sue Lick canceled her newspaper subscription because it no longer meets her needs. She turns that small act into a lesson for writers in keeping audience needs at the forefront.

How to Write an Elevator Pitch for your Freelance Writing Business
Do you effectively sell your services? If not, this no-nonsense post can help you create an effective and brief sales pitch to use with potential clients.

Platform

Nine Things to Clarify about Your Platform (Part 2)
Platform master Christina Katz closes her short series on pulling together an effective platform. Read part 1 here, if you missed it.

1. Prioritize
   Lay out all of your projects and assign a numerical priority to each based on deadline and contractual obligations. Yes, this means you should work on the boring contracted piece before you dive into the fun spec piece!

   Arrange them in priority order and figure out how long each will take.

2. Break Them Down
   One of the pedagogical tricks I learned while working for an ed tech publisher was the concept of chunking information. When teaching complicated concepts, effective educators break the concepts into easily digested chunks to present to students. Each chunk builds to the next so that students will understand the new concepts based on their prior learning.

   This concept also works with large projects. If you sit down to write a novel, you may give up because that big monolithic goal seems too hard to achieve. But, if you take it chapter by chapter, soon you’ll be finished with your first draft.

   Take your highest priority project and your estimate of the time it will take. Break it into maybe five chunks. If necessary, break those chunks down further, then do the same thing with your second highest priority.Schedule your time so that you apply internal deadlines to each chunk, then put the tasks on your calendar. Stick to these deadlines.

3. Adjust Your Personal ScheduleIn a perfect world, family time and work time would never butt up against each other. But, when you have too much work for your scheduled work time, something has to give.

   Find tasks that other family members could help with. Could your spouse pick up the weekly groceries on the way home from work? Could your kids sweep or vacuum? (If you have any tips for training the dogs to do the dishes, please let me know!)
   

4. Build in Rewards
   Remember that boring contracted piece I mentioned? You will quickly burn yourself our if you work on it nonstop. Figure out how much time you can work without a break and how much time you can spend on a break to recharge.

   The reward can be writing 100 words on the fun spec piece when you finish 1,000 words on the boring project. Or it can be catching a favorite TV show if you meet your daily goal. It can even be 10 minutes on Twitter if you have devoted the previous 50 to work. Find what motivates you.

5. Make Plans for the Future
   After you make it through this time of overwork with your sanity and career intact, make sure it doesn’t happen again. You’ve learned a valuable lesson about how much one person can accomplish, and you can use that knowledge to help you decide when you need to turn a project down.

How do you get through crazy work times?

But what is it that leads to over-committing and under-delivering? There are usually a few reasons.

1. Lack of a plan
    
   A lot of us begin our writing businesses without a sense of what it will take on the business end. As a result, we take projects as they come in, with little planning. That leads to an erratic stream of work. When we don’t know when the next job is coming, we are less likely to want to turn projects down because of lack of time.
    
2. An Inaccurate Estimate
    
   Sometimes, we don’t have a good idea of how long a particular job will take us or what effect our other obligations will have on our ability to complete our work.
    
3. Fear of the Word “No”
    
   I hate being told no. So, when I have to tell someone else no, I start to think about how they will feel when they hear it. I can go through a whole range of emotional responses in my head in mere seconds. All of this emotional backflipping makes me feel very bad about declining.

A little business planning can address all of these issues.

First, create a simple business plan and a desired work schedule. Break your work day into the component tasks, allocating at least half of your time to marketing, billing, and other office tasks–the rest is your billable time. Ensure that your rates match the amount of billable time you have allotted. If not, adjust your rates so that your billable hours won’t need to bleed into your non-billable time, which would then need to bleed into your family or leisure time.

Then, make sure you are keeping an accurate count of the hours you spend on each project. Use those counts to determine how much time similar projects will take you in the future. This will allow to provide appropriate estimates and schedule your work time appropriately.

After completing these business tasks, you may notice the shift in attitude that will help you address the last issue: You should be viewing your writing business with less emotion. And that will help you realize that saying no is a business decision, not a personal affront to your current and potential clients. You are not doing your clients any favors by taking on more projects than you can do well or on time. In fact, telling the truth about your availability and suggesting a different time line or even a fellow writer who could help is the biggest favor you can offer.

What do you do when you are overwhelmed? Do you just say no? Do you have a network of writers to whom you can refer overflow business? Do you subcontract rather than turning down jobs? Or do you just work extra hours to get things done?

Enjoy!

Anyway, I’m still kvetching and kvelling about time management. My deadlines are approaching, and I’m feeling the pressure to meet them. Thus time is one of my biggest concerns.

As I was reading up on writers and time management (read: procrastinating), I came across two great blog posts.

Is It Really about Time?

In this inspirational post, author Shirley Jump argues that time management isn’t really the issue. Instead, what we writers need to manage is our priorities.

Sketch out a rough schedule of your typical day. This schedule will give you a good idea of your current priorities. Rather than looking for ways to find extra time, look for ways to readjust your priorities so that you are spending your time on your most important and rewarding activities.

How to Keep Your Day Job from Killing Your Writing Career

In the other post, the intrepid blogger offered some good tips on how to balance your writing life and your day job. He suggested getting up a little early in the morning to start your day off with writing. Then go to your day job. After you get home, take some time to decompress, exercise, maybe take a shower. Then end your day with writing. By bookending your day with some sort of writing activity, your writing becomes your emotional focus and your day job is a daily diversion, rather than the other way around.

The important nugget here is the concept of making your day job less important without shirking your responsibilities. We spend a huge amount of time on our day job–not just the time we are at our desks, but also the commute, the time spent getting ready in the morning and decompressing afterward. And it is hard to spend that same amount of time on our writing. We have to be efficient when we write so that we can accomplish our goals.

What time management tips, tools, or guiding principles work for you?