Writing Targets for 2013

I’ve found that it is important to have goals and write them down. This makes them more realistic and pushes you towards them even more. Always set a deadline for your goals that is realistic and attainable but still pushes you. This will offer you the motivation you need to continue with your writing and get to where you want to be.

My New Year business resolution for 2013 is to take my writing more seriously. Last year was difficult for me since from April to December I was on maternity leave and my family life was more important. Now that I am back, I am looking for more ways to create a residual income stream so that I can have time off to spend with my little girl and higher paying clients to do less work throughout the day. Here are the goals that I have for 2013.

Set a Target for the Month

This year I will have a monthly target that I will push myself to meet. I’m starting off relatively low for the first couple of months at £1,000 per month, which is about the wage of someone who works full-time at minimum wage in the UK. As I develop my writing and goals, this monthly target will increase.

Having a monthly target helps me set a daily target. I divide the amount that I want to earn each month by the number of days that I want to work. This will differ from month to month. For January, I don’t need to take any time off, so I just need to factor in the days that I want to take off during the week – usually Wednesdays and Sundays. The only other day that I took off was New Years Day. That left me with 21 working days in January, which means that my target per day is £47.

A Goal for More Residual Income

I never really took this seriously the last couple of years but did have articles up on various websites. While I’ve been on maternity leave, those articles have been building up money and I did receive payout every now and then and without much promotion for me. I’ve even started seeing my own blogs offer a return after all the work I’ve been doing. I now see that residual income is a reality and want to make it a reality for me.

I’m researching more websites that offer residual pay, such as HubPages and Squidoo. I signed up for many when I first started writing online but left them, thinking that I’d never see payout. This year I’m looking at them more serious and setting up a schedule to post at various websites on a regular basis to help improve my chances of residual income.

Starting My Own Websites

The end of 2012 I started to get my own websites up and running. The first was Student Survival Tips, which is still building slowly. I now have Mummy and Baby Musings and am looking at many other options. I want to take a move away from Blogger blogs and have my own sites, where I have more control. These sites will also offer me more residual income so that I can take some time off.

Finding Higher Paying Clients (Preferably in Pounds)

I write for a number of content sites that pay minimal amounts. They help to fill in the gaps when my clients don’t have any work for me. However, this year I’m going to search for more higher paying clients and more websites that accept guest posts for a larger pay. I’ve found a number of tech sites looking for writers so I’m going to start taking my tech writing more seriously.

By finding higher paying sites and clients I will be able to do less work during the day. Instead of it taking me four or five hours to reach my daily target (still less hours that it does for someone working full-time at minimum wage), it will take me a couple of hours. What could be better than working half a day and spending the rest of my time with my six month old daughter?

I’ll keep the content sites though. While the pay is low, I can do the articles quickly. It takes me about 15 minutes to complete a 400 word article. I worked out a couple of weeks ago that I type at a rate of 95 words per minute on average! These sites usually offer topics that I’ve already got the research for or know answers off the top of my head from years of writing on the same topic. They’re not worthwhile full-time but they are great to fill in the gaps on bad days.

What are your goals for 2013? Are you looking for more residual pay? Are you finally taking the steps to start writing and earning money? Good luck!

Tools Any Creative Writer Must Have

In this day and age, technology offers you the world at your finger tips. You no longer need to go to a country to place a story in it. You no longer need to buy baby books to find names for your characters. Everything is free or costs a very little amount so you can start writing and never have to leave your home. Here are tools that all creative writers need.

Baby Name Websites

There are plenty of them! Bookmark a number of baby name websites to help you with your character names. All you need to do is go through the list to find one that jumps out. Many will let you do searches for certain types of names, such as by the alphabet, the meaning of names or the origin.

Search Engines

While Google is arguably the best, there are plenty of other search engines out there that will offer you the information you need. Whichever you choose to use, learn everything you can about it. How will it rank information? Can you filter the information to remove the content that you don’t want? Can you specify something if a word has a few meanings? The more you know, the more effective your searches will be and the easier it will be to find out information about your chosen subject to write about.

Google Earth

Want to write about a country that you have never been to? Need to write a chase scene and want to make it more realistic? Google Earth will help you with that. You can see a 3D view of the area and find out the street names. This is much easier to plan around buildings so readers are drawn into your story. This is free to view on your computer or you can download the app onto your phone.

A Good Encyclopaedia

Gone are the days when you need to have shelves filled with encyclopaedias or have to visit your local library. The internet is full of information for you. Avoid Wikipedia, unless you want to scroll down to the references and check them! Wikipedia can be changed by anyone so the information is not always accurate.

When working on creative writing, I’ve found all of these have been excellent. I can write scenes in the United States without actually going there to make sure it is possible; I can offer different names for my characters instead of using the same ones in different books; I can offer accurate information about history or myths when using them. I recommend these tools for any writer just beware of doing more research than you need to because it is fun!