New Year Coming

  I'm doing Ye Old File Drawer organizing at the end of this year. After writing for several publishers with representation from several agents, several amendments to contracts, etc. needed better organization/consideration.

With new horizons popping up every day, I'm considering e-publishing several very early books and that calls for lots of contract reading. You'd be surprised what a mop-up operation this can be, certainly not small enough when sorting, to fit across a desk. There is also communication with agents and rights. Rights are very big now, and should have been much earlier.

 Right or wrong career decisions are at a writer's every turn. A good filing system is only so good, if it does not have all the correspondence/contracts in it, and I had to request one contract from a former agent.

Agents are usually great to deal with, even after leaving them. I need to prepare some correspondence to former agents, but that will have to wait until the new year.

  Right now, I'm putting the old year to bed, doing some tax set-up stuff (spreadsheets are great), but I'm also thinking of my New Year's schedule and possible travel. Writer scheduling is probably one of the most important facets of a career.


Publishing usually happens this way: A book is coming out, high energy needed for its "pub" date. Then: A book is due, plus all the articles, etc. and other obligations. Those two dates frequently occur together: Pub Date and Contract Manuscript Due Date. Holidays are really difficult when both dates fall within that time.

I'll be gifting advice about spreadsheets in January or so.
  One of the must-do items on my list for 2010 is getting a new PR photo. Or take my own. iStockPhoto has great advice on this.

One of the best tips I can give is to collect a freebie calendar booklet for tax mileage and keep it in the car. Do you realize that those freebies we used to see in every drugstore are scarce now? So get that 2010 calendar going, check out the conferences that will be of the most use to you.

Yep. Time to clean up the old year and lay out plans for the new one.

Since stress-free is my theme today for all three blogs, My Jam Jar and The Second Cup and this one, my today's writer's advice?

Work on your filing and business and scheduling in advance.