Writing full-time as a career requires strong discipline. Every writer knows this, but it’s easier to think that you’ll meet the writer agent or editor somehow by magic. The boring fact is that you have to do your writing like a project. Each piece of writing is a different project. Imagine that each “project” has been commissioned by a client. You have deadlines (making them soft for now), and you must keep the related information organized for several reasons. One is that you want to be able to easily retrieve a project. Two is that you want to be able to send a client any information regarding the project in a suitable manner. Three is that if your projects are organized, you can track how things are going.

If you are writing short stories or articles, as opposed to only books, I strongly recommend keeping a “Status Report” to track each project. Otherwise it’s easy to forget where you are at with “smaller” projects. You know that a book isn’t finished, but maybe you want to track each book or section. Keeping track will give you a sense of accomplishment each time you reach a milestone and thus, hopefully, motivate you to keep going.

- Feb 18/2003

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