Week 8 of Full-Time Writing: Diary Entry #9
Being your own boss means developing your own business strategy and figuring out the path that leads to where you want to go.
I spent most of my life working for people who did that for me. Now that I’m learning to do it for myself, the skills are coming to me slowly, in bits and pieces, as I see what works and what doesn’t. This week has led to some big strategic shifts, and hopefully for the best.
My Schedule
This week I planned to work on my novel in the morning, my short story in the afternoons, and articles in the late afternoons.
It didn’t work out that way.
What worked?
I’m not sure anything worked this week. It was chaos. But I did figure out that I’m just working on too many things to make any solid progress in one area. I realized I need to be more strategic about my schedule, and that I may have to sacrifice some things to get others done.
What didn’t work?
I went off the rails this week. One day, I cleared my schedule and dedicated that time to one project that I’d been working on for weeks in small time intervals. And guess what? I finished it that day. Which leads me to believe that I might be going about my schedule all wrong.
Plan for next week
Next week is Fantasy Writer’s Week at ProWritingAid. It’s a free webinar event that’s going on Monday through Thursday (though Thursday’s events are for premium ProWritingAid users only). I’ve chosen a few of those events that I’d like to attend, which will take some time out of my writing schedule.
Now, on to my plan.
My boyfriend has some experience with strategic planning, so based on my experience this week, he helped me develop a strategy for the next month.
Since I want to ramp up my pitching and paid writing opportunities next month, that’s my first priority. That means that part of my schedule takes priority over everything else. So on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I’m going to send one pitch each. If I have extra time, I’ll work on my short stories.
My second priority task is my novel. I have a specific goal that I want to reach by the end of March, which means I’ll need to write 1200 words each on Tuesday and Thursday every week in March.
My third priority task is writing and engaging on here. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, after writing 1200 words for my novel, I will spend the rest of the day working on Medium.
Of course, any writing jobs that come from the pitches (3 per week) will require my full attention, and those will take priority over pitching until they’re finished.
Successes, Failures, and Lessons Learned
I didn’t stick to my schedule much at all this week, but I got a few things done and learned a thing or two.
Challenge
Figuring out how to work for yourself is hard. If you don’t have a proper strategy in place, you just kind of randomly do things you think you should do and imagine you’re getting somewhere. Coming to terms with the fact that I was just randomly doing things without proper strategy was the biggest challenge this week.
Victory
I got some things done, and I uncovered a better path forward. I’m excited to try out the new strategy next month.
I finished a portfolio piece and published it here:
And I published this, which was originally a personal journal entry:
How I felt
This week I felt very overwhelmed and pressured to meet my goals, even though I was struggling to define why my goals even mattered. I handled it a lot better than I have in the past, and this time, I really tried to focus on fixing what wasn’t working instead of becoming sad and useless.
Tools I used
This week I switched from Grammarly to ProWritingAid — tentatively. It’s similar, but so far I’ve noticed that it has a lot more features and intelligent suggestions than Grammarly. It’s not perfect, but it’s good. The main thing I hated about Grammarly is that you had to copy and paste your writing into their web app to get all the suggestions, which strips the formatting, so you’d have to reformat your work afterwards. With PWA, you can open the full editor easily from your document and it keeps your formatting mostly intact. I’m still trying it out, but so far I’m a fan. They even have integrations for Scrivener, which I’m going to check out.
Goal Review
I’m going to switch this up for the next month. My goal reviews are going to be focused on my three priorities, and each week I’ll review my progress against them.
Priority 1: Send one pitch on Monday, one on Wednesday, and one on Friday. Writing jobs trump this for top priority.
Priority 2: Write 1200 words in my novel on Tuesday and Thursday.
Priority 3: Write and engage on Medium.
Bonus: Work on a short story.
Final Thoughts
Even though it seems like I may be backtracking, it’s actually the opposite. I’m moving forward and adjusting the strategy. Whatever comes of it will be a learning experience. I, for one, can’t wait to see how next week turns out!
Have a great week!
If you enjoy reading articles like this and aren’t yet a Medium member, you can use this link to join. You’ll get unlimited access to every article on the platform. Your $5/month membership fee will help support me as a writer and every Medium contributor whose articles you read. By using my link, I’ll earn a small commission. Thank you! 🤗
