This week in issue 30 of The Prosperous Writer, I blogged on the topic of being busy in our writing careers and what that might look and feel like.

What kind of lessons has being busy taught you? I look forward to reading your response to the e-zine prompt in your blog.

This blogging prompt is exclusively for subscribers of The Prosperous Writer blog. But if you want to get in on the next prompt round (I don’t archive issues), please feel free to join us by signing up to receive the e-zine next week.

Then hop in with next weeks’ prompt. You are welcome to join in any time!

If you are posting your blog’s link and it doesn’t show up immediately in the comments, that’s because I have to approve comments with links. I will regularly, don’t worry. I will also “whitelist” regulars and then they won’t have to wait for their comments to be approved.

And then I’ll round the posts up each week and share them in the e-zine.

Look forward to tweeting what what you have to say on Twitter to my almost 8500 followers!

Thanks for subscribing to The Prosperous Writer…

This week in issue 29 of The Prosperous Writer, I blogged on the topic of being polite in our writing careers and what that might look and feel like.

I realize that folks’ definitions of being polite vary. I would not be surprised if they vary quite a bit. That’s what makes this such an interesting topic to blog about.

This blogging prompt is exclusively for subscribers of The Prosperous Writer blog. But if you want to get in on the next prompt round (I don’t archive issues), please feel free to join us by signing up to receive the e-zine next week.

Then hop in with next weeks’ prompt. You are welcome to join us.

If you are posting your blog’s link and it doesn’t show up immediately in the comments, that’s because I have to approve comments with links.

I will regularly, don’t worry.

Then I’ll round them up each week and post them in the e-zine.

Look forward to sharing what you have to say!

Look what Andrea did to her copy!

Thank you for celebrating the three year anniversary of Writer Mama, How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids with me. I am going to keep celebrating for the rest of the month since I am launching my first e-book, Author Mama (which is like the sequel to Writer Mama in case you were wishing there was a sequel).

I’m very excited that Debbie Ridpath Ohi has granted me rights to one of her cartoons for the cover of the e-book.

Initially I am going to launch my e-books in a beta format at a lower price, so that all of my long-time fans and writer friends won’t have to pay full price and can participate in the final phases of development of the e-book, if they wish.

Some days, including today, I am amazed to learn that moms are still cracking Writer Mama open and reading it, and even doing the exercises. I guess we (Jane Friedman and myself) were hoping that’s what would happen when we envisioned the book way back in 2005.

I sure do appreciate every bit of support that I have received from readers over the past many years. 2007, the year that Writer Mama was published, was a huge year, and I will always look back fondly at my initiation into the author’s journey.

And now without further ado, the following five Prosperous Writer subscribers have each won a signed copy of Writer Mama:

• Debbie Williams
• Jessie Haynes
• Alexis Ahrens
• Becky Levine
• Coreen N

Congratulations to everyone who won!

Please send your snail mail address to katz christina at comcast dot net (please note my new address) and I’ll send you a signed copy of Writer Mama. Let me know if you would like a particular inscription.

And if you have yet to read Writer Mama, you might want to get a jump on it before the “sequel” comes out. You can pick up a copy from your local indie bookstore, your local library, or order from Amazon or Writer’s Digest. You can also read Writer Mama as an e-book from Writer’s Digest, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

Money is what writers earn for their time and energy. Furthermore, writing careers are built over time not overnight. So don’t put your career in jeopardy by paying attention to everything else at the expense of your bottom line.

Here are nine prosperity-increasing tips that can quickly become habit and put more money in the bank for the same number of hours you already work or maybe even less:

1. Make a list of paid work vs. unpaid work, if you don’t have one already and update it monthly. Add to-dos like upcoming deadlines and prep for future efforts, to make sure you don’t have to scramble later.
2. Prioritize the work you do that is paid over the work you do that is unpaid. This doesn’t mean the unpaid work is not important or doesn’t need to get done. It simply means that you will get the paid work done first and then tackle the unpaid work.
3. Spend time with other writers who make money writing. If they are too busy (making money) to spend time with you, sign up for their newsletters, read their blogs or connect with them via social networking whenever possible. When contacting successful writers, keep your expectations realistic. There’s a reason they make the big bucks and it’s not because they are just hanging out all day. When you are working, whether online or off, be aware of folks who drain your energy or co-opt your time. You simply don’t have time for those people when you are supposed to be working.
4. Don’t confuse “nice” people with profitable people. Let’s say one writer invests all of his time trying to make sure everyone knows what a great guy he is, while another writer invests his time landing assignments, delivering on deadlines, and landing the next gig. Who is the more successful writer? I’d say it’s the more productive writer (the second example). And he’s the one I’d be more likely to trust, as well. So go ahead, broadcast your success!
5. Tackle the types of assignments that pay directly. Forget about any kind of writing job you “might” get paid for. Also don’t count writing you do for exposure as “paid.” And when someone offers you vague future money for today’s actual work, take twice as much time to carefully consider the offer. Why not just take on the sure-thing assignments, which are the projects that pay you directly for your work? If you keep things simple, you are more likely to prosper  in both the short run and the long run.
6. Spend the most time doing whatever you do best even if that means doing a few different things. For example, I don’t only write because if I only wrote all day, I’d soon be bored out of my mind, no matter how interesting the topics were that I was writing on. A restless person like me needs to do a variety of things. So I also teach and speak and the three efforts feed each other and increase my overall value as a writer.
7. However, don’t spread yourself too thin. I do a lot of different things but I’ve noticed that I can only do so many things before I hit overload, especially since I am a busy mom and wife, as well as a working professional. This overload point is going to be different for everyone and can change with your life circumstances, so adjust your expectations accordingly. You want to do everything you do well, not just scrape by.
8. Capture all of your business expense receipts as the year ticks along so that you can benefit from every deduction available to you when you pay your taxes. I am not the queen of filing things, so I just get a big basket and toss all my receipts in there until I’m ready to sort and report. If you need a primer on the specifics of what you can and can’t expense, pick up the March/April issue of Writer’s Digest magazine and check out the article, “Taxpertise For Writers” by Bonnie Lee. In fact, the theme of the issue is, “Your Economic Survival Guide,” so why not read the whole thing?
9. Be timely. Seek and adopt the simplest systems to help you meet your deadlines, pay your bills, get your taxes submitted, etc. It doesn’t matter which system you use. What matters more is that you make good use of the systems that work best for you and switch when one method stops working for you.

I bet you want to spend as little of your time as possible being inefficient, so that you can get back to writing. So keep things simple: write, earn and prosper. An efficient writer is a profitable writer.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have some writing deadlines to meet.

Photo by yomanimus

I’ve talked a lot about how I’ve streamlined my career for 2010. And even though, you’ve heard plenty about how I’ve cut, cut, cut back, I haven’t really offered a through-line of the constructive steps I took to relaunch my new identity as The Prosperous Writer. So let’s take a look at that.

Choose A Time When You Are Not Frantically Busy

I have learned the hard way, that it’s difficult to make solid decisions about my future when I’m moving too fast. In fact, I would go so far as to say, that if you can’t create a lull in your usual workload then maybe it’s not really a good time to change directions. Changing directions smoothly for me this New Year has had everything to do with the fact that I could create something of a trough where, free from the pressure of a lot of deadlines, I could hunker down and concentrate on the major shift at hand. The year before, I’d wanted to make changes at the New Year but I was so busy and had so much momentum going under my new book that, I can see in retrospect, it really wasn’t the best time for making changes. Waiting for a quiet time, like over the holidays, was a good plan.

Take Your Time, Do It Right

I didn’t make any impetuous decisions. I spent a good nine months just getting ready to make the change, studying what was going on in my niche, noticing the folks who were setting the most integrating examples, and being clear that I would not get mixed up in any way with those I either don’t trust or who I perceive as not acting with integrity. I’ve worked too hard and too long to follow the example of people who are making it up (sometimes questionably) as they go along.

Zoom In On The Essence of Who You Are & What You Offer

Of course, how to get to the crux of who you are and what you offer is outlined in detail in my book, Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths To Grow An Author Platform (Writer’s Digest 2008).  I sure did not expect to have to use my own tools to refocus my career so soon after the book coming out. But I did and fortunately they work just as well for refocusing as they do for focusing.

Take Advantage Of The New Technology, Because It’s All At Your Fingertips

Once you are committed to integrity and you know who you are and what you are all about, it’s a lot easier to appraise the vast array of technology at your fingertips and decide which tools will best serve you. For example, I am currently using blogging as a primary tool for creating a centralized online presence. Having studied the examples of other people for many months, Wordpress.org emerged as a highly recommended host. I also noticed that the people who are really informed about blogging, like Chris Brogan, use a template called Thesis which was touted as offering ease of use and great SEO. So far, so good.

Making Smart Choices Takes Patience

If you are in a hurry while you consolidate, you are going to get frustrated. One stumbling block I encountered was that all of my previous websites were hosted by a provider that was no longer working out. My old provider had been sold about a year and a half ago and I hadn’t had the time to decide what the next best move was with my many websites. After repeated technical problems with the new provider, I knew I was leaving. I did some polling on Twitter and Facebook, and narrowed the choice of my new provider down to two. Ultimately I chose the provider I felt would allow me the most ease of use because it is the most popular provider on the Web. Since I do everything web-related myself, I wanted the provider with the best DIY tools and customer support. That’s why I ultimately went with GoDaddy.com. (For the record, the other host I’ve heard lots of good things about but chose not to go with was Bluehost.com.)

To Be Continued…

Okay, so this may surprise you, but, I didn’t launch The Prosperous Writer e-zine to please people. I launched it because I could perceive the huge, gaping need. There are too many writers still living out the starving artist motif.

We can do better than that now. We truly can.

I’m living proof and so are many others who will be profiled here as the year rolls on.

I could see a whole bunch of topics that I felt needed to be addressed that fall under this topic and not enough people addressing them…the way I would address them. In other words, I had a lot to say and nowhere to say it.

My experience as a veteran freelancers and two-time author help me with the writing aspect. I would be remiss not to  credit my three years of experience as a blogger, six years of experience as an e-zine publisher, and nine years of working one-on-one and in groups as a teacher with adults who write. Also, I am a frequent speaker, panelist, and voracious learner at writing and publishing related conferences. I’m the member of three writing associations (down from six in 2009, but we’ll talk about why later).

I didn’t launch The Prosperous Writer because someone else was doing something similar and I saw that and thought I could do it better. I didn’t notice anyone else doing what I wanted to do the way I wanted to do it. So I just did it.

So, if you are doing anything like what I’m doing, brava! Great minds really do think alike.

I was rather shocked when TheProsperousWriter.com was available as a URL, especially since I was so late getting it.

For the record, this concept didn’t take shape over night. I spent the better part of 2009 developing it, managing my then responsibilities, and planning for the transition. By October there was nothing left to do but go for it.

So I created this blog to be the home base that would tie together all that I’ve done up until now and help me segue into this topic.

How am I doing so far?

Here’s what some people are saying:

“Appreciating Christina Katz advice to slow down and not be such a crazy-person writer.”

~ Children’s author, Amber J. Keyser in her Facebook status

“…thank you for the reminder that we need to take things easier, slower, and with more grace and sanity. These are good things to remind myself as I head into the new year with my paper back coming out in July, my publicist busy booking talks, my agent asking for book No. 2 and my son reminding me of my pledge that I would not let being a writer change me…”

~Naseem Rakha from a comment in this blog, award winning novelist of the debut novel, The Crying Tree (Broadway Books)

@jencrowell The Prosperous Writer: @thewritermama did an inspiring job of streamlining and focusing her web presence for 2010.

~ Jenn Crowell on Twitter

I almost forgot. The Prosperous Writer blog is right here and available for everyone. But The Prosperous Writer E-zine has unique content, not published anywhere else, and will provide you with plenty of food for thought to help you become increasingly prosperous in 2010.

Join us! Sign up over in the right-hand corner!

Every year, Ali Edwards, a blogger I follow, talks about the practice of choosing one word.

Something I’ve learned about the one word game is that the word has to be the kind of word that will set me back on track, if I start to stray.

I was going to choose the word “amaze” for 2010. There are so many new things that I want to test and try and play with and I thought if I chose “amaze” it would remind me to inspire myself and others.

But on second thought, I’m choosing “prosperous.” Yesterday I purchased the URL for theprosperouswriter.com and redirected it back to this blog.

Yesterday the first issue of The Prosperous Writer went out to thousands of subscribers and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

What does prosperous mean?

According to Webster, prosperous means favorable, marked by success or economic well-being, enjoying vigorous and healthy growth, flourishing.

Vigorous and healthy growth to the point of flourishing over and over…now when I talk about a prosperous writer, that’s what I’m talking about.

This year, I’m going to introduce you to writers I’ve worked with who fit this description, each in their own unique way.

If you’d like to work with me, I’ve got two classes starting on January 13th: Writing & Publishing the Short Stuff and Turn Your Specialty Into Course Curriculum. And I’m looking for prosperous writers, who want to dig in and get growing.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Happy weekend!

Photo by Tassiesim

Today at five after midnight Pacific Time, I launched the premier issue of The Prosperous Writer.

If you missed it, e-mail me at christina katz at earthlink dot net and I will be happy to send it on over to your inbox. (Please check your inbox first, if you were a former subscriber of mine, then you should have received it.)

Unlike in the past, the e-zine will not be posted in this blog. This blog will carry original content of its own. Ditto the e-zine will carry original content.

As an exception, I want to share some announcements I made in the e-zine. I also want to provide a space for folks to comment on the decisions I’ve made. If you have anything to express, please feel free to comment. Here goes:

Breaking News: Time to say goodbye to…

• Writers on the Rise
• The Writer Mama
• Get Known Groove

So all three monthly e-zines are being wrapped up into this weekly communication, which will deliver timely, relevant tips and insights for writing prosperously through changing times, including breaking news and how you can contribute. And every single thing I’ll ask you to do is like a mini-lesson in how to thrive in the new gig economy.

A few more things I am saying good-bye to:

• #platformchat
• The Writer Mama Back-to-School Giveaway
• The Writer Mama Anniversary Book Tour

All three of the above involved large contributions of time and energy, not just from me but from everyone involved. In order to pave the way for new and exciting ventures, I need to prune back the tasks that overtax me. So adieu, adieu, adieu! We had so much fun!

And then, just when I was lightening my load, I made a false start:

I said I would launch a Writer Mama Book Club in 2010. But once I got christinakatz.com up and running, I quickly realized that this would be unsustainable. So there won’t be a Writer Mama Book Club in 2010. But I hope you will still come by on January 5th and bring your questions for Therese Walsh about her wonderful debut novel, The Last Will of Moira Leahy.

I want to thank everyone who has contributed to all of these wonderful celebrations of learning and sharing over the years. We really created some cool stuff.

Please join me in bidding a fond farewell to all of these wonderful endeavors…and in saying HELLO to a new year!

Next week , I’ll share the list of all the new offerings I have for 2010. Can’t wait. More soon!

If you’d like to stay in the loop, please subscribe to The Prosperous Writer in the upper right-hand corner of the blog.