Fitting writing into your freelance writing day

When freelance writing is your business, you must find time to write. Otherwise you don’t get paid.

Writing as a career involves more than just writing, however.

The many tasks you need to fit into your writing week include:

* Finding ideas

* Writing queries and proposals

* Marketing your freelance writing business

* Following up with clients

* Invoicing clients and generally taking care of getting paid

* Networking with prospective clients, current clients and other writers

* Developing and extending your skills

You’ll notice that none of the above include writing. You can spend hours “working” – answering email messages, talking with clients on the phone, and posting updates to clients’ Web sites, without writing a single word.

The concept of billable hours – making sure you get paid sooner or later

“Billable hours” is a very useful concept for writers. Freelance writers only get paid for completed work, so it’s vital to build as many billable hours into your writing week as you can.

If I suspect that I’m spending too much time on writing which isn’t billable, I start logging my writing time in a Numbers spreadsheet to find out exactly where the time’s going. I log time in 30 minute portions, and I make sure that I “bill” everything, including the time I spend surfing the Web.

When you assign all your time to a particular billable project, you become much more aware of where the time’s going, even when you’re working for your own projects. If you’re writing a book, blogging, or creating content for a Web site for example, that time is billable too. You bill yourself. This helps you to work out how much a project is worth to you, when it comes time to set a price for the book or the Web site.

Try the billable hours concept: time really is money.

(If you’re finding you’re procrastinating OTOH, I’ve just written a post on my writing blog which may help.)

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