Writer Shout Out January 22nd

Jane Friedman gives a weekly roundup of the best writing tweets each Sunday at her blog.  These tweets include advice, quotes and links to some great writing articles and resources.  Worth a look each week.

I am a huge fan of Tim Ferris, but I often find that elements of his much acclaimed 4 Hour Workweek theory can be difficult to apply to a creative freelance career.  In this article from Spyre studios, there are some great tips on how to reduce your writing workload while maintaining or even growing your income.  One of my favorites is to prioritize your clients.  It's a task I don't relish, as thehierarchy is often not solely based on how much a client spends.  For example I have some clients that blow the value of their fees by choking up my time with calls and emails, while other clients who spend less also leave me to get on with the tasks and accept all work with a smile and a thanks.   Consider scoring your clients based on income, repeat business, stress level and how much you enjoy the work and then using that score to see the true value of each client.

While we are on the topic of becoming more profitable, this post from GetPaidtoWrite was a huge wake up call.  Do you keep track of where your writing income comes from?  Do you track your time spent on queries vs the return?  Do you know which types of assignments have the highest profit, or which niches bought more of your work than others?  Running the numbers can shed some serious light on your finances and career and help you to identify ways to be more financially successful in 2010.