Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Tuesday's Taking Care of Business Tips for the Writer




First, a moment to listen to Bachman Turner Overdrive's Taking Care of Business because I bet your brain went there.


And now to take care of "end of the year business." (Yeah, I know that there's an entire month following November, but I also know that my brain is hijacked by the holidays. Frankly, my brain's kinda been hijacked by Bachman Turner Overdrive right now...)




Anyway, here's a handy checklist of Things To Do (If You're a Writer) for Taking Care of End-of-the-Year Business.


*Check your blog and/or website for dead links to your online work.


*Consider cleaning out some of those old, tired links and adding links to recent work. This simple step will give your blog and/or website a freshness as well as get rid of that static vibe.


*Find your Goals for 2011 (You did write down your goals somewhere, right?) and review. You'll still have time to work on the goals you completely forgot, and you'll end the year feeling wonderful about the goals you accomplished. (If you can't find your Goals for 2011 then I have a suggestion for what your very first goal for 2012 should be.)


*Take a mathematical look at your blog stats. Compare what posts generated excellent traffic to those that did not. Extrapolate and use the results to improve your stats next year. (I was looking at a picture of Albert Einstein right before I wrote this post.)


*Make a list of the writing books and/or business tools you'd like the Beneficent Mr. Hall to stuff under your tree. Of course, he'll probably only stuff those goodies under my tree. But hey, you can ask.


*Clean your desk, work space, cubbyhole, whatever or wherever you work. You'll start the new year with an organized perspective. (And you'll probably be shocked at what you find amongst the mess. Well, I assume you'll be shocked. My desk hasn't looked that clean and organized since I took that picture a couple years ago. But I never said I take care of all my business.)