A couple of months ago, back in November, I had applied to write at four different places online, never thinking I would be accepted by all of them. I was accepted, and then had to face the problem of how to work with writing for these new sites, along with my blogs and this site. Needless to say I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I ran into an article by Pat Flynn about productivity, and that was a great help. But I still needed to get more organized in order to complete all the writing I had committed to. At this point, I was feeling like maybe I should be committed—what was I thinking when considering writing for so many different places?
Whether I should be committed or not is a question for another blog on another site one day in the future. Right now, I had to find a way to juggle different writing commitments. The first thing I did was to sit down, open an Excel spreadsheet (any spreadsheet program will work), and made a list of all the places I have committed to write.
Writing site list.
Next, I created more columns with headings for Classification (must write or optional to write), Frequency (as in posting frequency), Writing Days (days to write new posts), and Publishing/Posting Days (when the articles/posts would publish). This helped me to see exactly how many places I need or want to write for, and helped to determine a schedule for writing and publishing.
Development of writing schedule.
This is a very easy way to sit down and begin to get your writing organized. It was a great help to me. From here, I was able to construct a writing schedule calendar. I’m not ready to create an editor’s calendar at this point, but at least have made a beginning by creating a writing schedule.
Next I downloaded an Excel calendar template from Download.com and used this to create my writing schedule (see below). The calendar is free and offers yearly calendars up to 2012. This is an example from my January writing schedule.
Example of writing calendar/schedule.
This is a very simple process, but one that has helped me to develop a schedule which will aid in posting articles on time, without missing any commitments. Having set up this bit of organization has taken away the feelings of being overwhelmed by it all. I have created a schedule that is realistic and will help me to develop discipline for my writing days. This organization should help me to become more productive, while staying on schedule with my writing commitments.
Along with this writing schedule, I have set up an article template. The template’s very simple, and I have created this in Word (you can use any word processor). The article temple includes the name of the site I’m writing the article for, the date, notes and keywords to be used in the article, along with the article title and publishing date. This system will allow me to keep track of all articles, and to have an organized copy of all articles saved to my external hard drive by date and article site.
One last bit of organization was to set up an income spreadsheet for my online writing. I was able to get the spreadsheet template for free from Felicia Williams over at No Job For Mom. Felicia’s spreadsheet is very well organized and will help any online writer to track several aspects of their business such as income comparison between the previous year and current year, average daily income, and much more. I got all the numbers entered from 2010, and have begun to track my income for 2011. Thank you, Felicia, for sharing this spreadsheet with your fellow writers!
All of this organization has taken a little bit of time to accomplish, but I consider this to be time well-spent. Now I’m all set to move forward with my writing and I’ll be able to keep track of everything—writing/publishing dates, income on a daily basis, etc. If you’re serious about making an income online, then it pays to treat your writing as a business, which it is, and become organized so you can be focused on your writing, and not worry about the record-keeping details.
Happy writing!
Sher
