The Golden Pencil: The Freelance Writer’s Resource

Create A Writing Plan

by Anne Wayman on February 6th, 2007

Several days ago, Lisa Gates, writing coach and creator of Design Your Writing Life, commented about creating a writing plan. I asked her for more information and she responded with this:

Thanks for the invitation to blab, Anne, and I think you probably do have a plan…I just may not have phrased things very well.

If you are a “declared” writer (I don’t mean famous or even published here) it is important to acknowledge that you are in business for yourself. As an entrepreneur, then, how would your business plan look? What are the elements? In this model, we typically flesh out things like vision, mission, objectives, strategies and plans. (I know those odious screaming banshee words are hideous to many writers, including me).

So if your mission is to build a thriving copywriting business, one of your objectives might be to generate $25,000 in 2007 writing copy for websites.

To achieve that objective, one of your plans might be to identify 10 potential web-based resources for articles on your area of expertise. Another objective might be to generate a subscription-based newsletter via your website.

The overall point here is that some of the opportunities we sieze as credible and worthy can often be big fat distractions in disguise. But if we can hold up these opportunities to the light and scrutiny of our plan, we’ll be better able to distinguish whether it’s a good use of our energy and talent or not. Will it feed the plan or keep me hungry?

I came to this through my own stupid mistakes, but also in working with coaching clients who are not writers. We work so much in the beginning to discover core values, and work toward truing up our values with our actions. So if we are writers with a vision and a plan (core values + commitments) and we find ourselves running a dog grooming business…hmmm…we’ve just gone astray of our whole big idea.

This was incredibly hard work for me as I love to fly by the seat of my pants, put the cart before the horse, etc. But to honor the fact that I value my marriage, my son, my health, etc., I had to come up with a plan that served my writing life and my WHOLE life as well.

What are your thoughts?

My thoughts are I agree entirely… which is why I brought this comment forward to make it a blog entry… Thanks Lisa; wise words indeed!

Write well and often

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POSTED IN: Business of Freelance Writing, Goals-Dreams-Visions