It’s April 1st!

Finally.

After a couple months of planning, several weeks of writing, and a late night of switching and customizing a new theme (last night.. Am so tired.) the new website is up and running.

Ready to check it out?     Writer at Home

My personal site is also up- Writer Mom at Home

As is my professional site- MargoUpson.com

Please update your subscriptions and bookmarks. I won’t be posting here anymore, but I’ll still keep it up. All of the previous posts have been moved over to the new site.

Thank you all so much for reading and interacting. I look forward to seeing you all over at Writer at Home.

The New Site

Shhh.

Technically, it’s not open yet. But if you’d like a sneak peak…

Writer At Home

I just started working on it this morning. It needs lots of love and attention. Please don’t judge it yet. I just thought you should all see where I’ve been spending all of my blog-lovingness, as I haven’t been posting here much.

What do you think?

Announcing.

Okay, I know. I know…

I said it would be a few days, and it’s been a month. I suck. But, things are turning around. I’ve decided to drop the “daily theme” idea. It was hard to work with. Instead, I am just going to stick up whatever I can think of. All good stuff, though.

I am working on some new things right now. By the end of the week, I hope to have a “bookshelf” section up and running. I have collected a few blogging/writing/programming books, and I will be putting up reviews as I finish them. Nothing monetized. Just there so you can see what I’m reading, and what I’d recommend.

I will be moving this blog to its real home on April 1st. Now you all know, and I have to stick to it. I will also be starting up a mom-blog. But there is a lot of work to be done. Wish me luck.

I will have a real post up by the end of the day. I swear. And thank you for your patience.

xWrite At Home Mom

On Hold

Hi, Everyone.

It’s probably going to be a few days before I get some posts up.  Things have suddenly gotten really crazy for me.  Sorry.  Please check back, though.  I’ll try to get a post ready for friday.

The Schedule of a Writer Mom.

Like most of you, I am a wife, a writer, a business person, and a mom.  Of those four job titles, I am a mom first.  My daughter is everything to me.

Unfortunately, she can make it very difficult to get work done some days.  This is especially true if she is sick or just tired and cranky.  During those times, she needs mommy.  And I need to work.  So how do I get work done while being a mom first?  Here’s what I do.

I get up early, usually around 6:00 am.  While everyone else is still sleeping, I try to get a quick article or two done, write a blog post, and get myself set for the day.  The house is quiet, and I can usually count on 2-3 hours of uninterrupted writing time.

My daughter is at the age where she can keep herself busy for a little bit here or there.  So, after cuddles, breakfast, and a little play, I try to get a little more work done before my husband wakes up an noon (he works nights).  Later, he gives me an hour to work while he plays with our daughter.  Once he leaves for work, I let Becca (our daughter) entertain herself for a bit longer, and then I try to finish up by 5:00.  I end up with about five hours to work by the time I add everything up.

Since I have started writing, I have learned a few tricks to maximize the amount of work I get done during those hours.  I use lists to keep track of what work I need to get done on a daily and weekly basis.  Every night, I’ll make a list of the next day’s writing assignments, and give myself the chance to plan them out before bedtime.  In the morning, I’ll make rough outlines, and look for my sources.  Being able to digest the information makes writing easier, and more natural-sounding.

If they’re available, I try to claim multiple articles about the same, or similar, topics. This makes research a lot easier, and the writing goes a lot faster. But be careful of writing the two articles that are very similar unintentionally, though.  I try not to write about two very similar topics for the same site in a row, for example “How To Plant An Organic Garden” and “How To Plant a Vegatable Garden.”  By working on something else between these two articles, I can make sure that they both sound unique.  I try to put one other articlebetween them, so that the information is still fresh, but not so fresh that I write the same article twice.

And for those sick and cranky days?  I turn off my computer, and spend a little extra time making my girl feel extra special. She deserves it.   There’s always that night, or even the next day, to get the work done.

What are some of your tips for squeezing in extra writing time, or for maximizing the time that you do have?  If you are nice enough to share your ideas with me, I’ll put them all in a post tomorrow, along with your name and the address of your blog or website, if you have one, so others can see where the idea is coming from, and hopefully check out your site, too.

Can’t wait to see your ideas!

Looking Forward/Looking Back

At the beginning of a New Year, it is easy to get caught up in the tradition of planning resolutions and goals. I look forward to it.  It’s like staring at the first clean page of an empty notebook.  Nothing but possibilities.

It’s also important to look back, though.  What were your goals for last year?  Did you meet them?  Exceed them?  If so, then maybe this is the time to set more challenging goals for yourself.  If you didn’t achieve your goals, was it because they were too difficult, or because you weren’t as committed as you could have been?

I usually fall into the second part of that.  It’s easy to get distracted, and off-track.  I also have the tendency to think I can accomplish a lot more than I reasonably can.  And that can be discouraging, especially when I am looking at my to-do list, with almost nothing crossed off.

By looking back, I can see where I have succeeded (great job, decent income, learned a lot) and where I need to improve (less distractions, better time-management, more realistic expectations.)  I need to learn how to set better goals, but I also need to get better about pushing myself to reach them.

What is a realistic daily writing goal?  Should I be counting articles, or counting overall productivity?  I know where I want to be a year from now, but I need to set concrete steps along the way.  It is important to not only have annual goals, but also quarterly, monthly, and even weekly goals written down.  Make them goals that you can reach, but not too easily.  Goals should be a little bit challenging, to help you stretch and grow as a writer and business woman (or man.)

This is especially important when you work for yourself.  There is no one standing over your shoulder, telling you where you need to improve, or letting you know that you are doing a great job.  As write-at-home moms, we need to figure these things out for ourselves. How? By comparing our goals with the progress we’re making.  If it feels like we’re spinning our wheels, stuck in the same place we were a few months, or even a year, ago, it’s time to make some changes.  And that’s the amazing thing about our careers.  If a change needs to be made, we get to decide where that change will take us.  Branching out into other formats of writing?  Concentrating more on our niche?  It’s up to us, but we need to set goals to get us there.

I know that I need to get a bit more serious about writing.  I have a lot of goals for this year.  I want to increase the amount of writing I can produce in a day, and I want to improve my writing skills.  I want to set up my website, find a few private clients, and build a decent residual income.  I have a long way to go, and I still need to figure out all the details, but as the first of the year starts to fade behind us, it’s nice to know that I have a lot to look forward to.

A little bit about me.

I will officially kick everything off on here on Monday. I wanted to post a quick bit about myself, though.  In case anyone was interested.

I am a work at home mom, with a career in freelance writing.  I started on October 29, 2008.  In the past two months, I’ve learned a lot about writing as a career, but I still have so much more to learn.  I write for QualityGal and WiseGEEK.  QualityGal provides web content for companies, based on their needs.  I love writing for her, and this is where I’ve been doing most of my work lately.  WiseGEEK is a huge information site, with articles about anything you could imagine.  I’ve written a lot of really fun articles for them.  I also write, on occasion, for Text Broker and Associated Content.  I just put up my first eHow article yesterday.  Over the next year or so, I want to spend a lot more time working on building residual income, which will allow me more time to focus on other parts of my career.  Not to mention, I barely get writting time now, with one child, unless my husband is home.  When there are four of them running around, I won’t be getting much of anything done.  It will be nice to still be making some money at that point, even if I’m not getting a lot of writing time.

During the rare moments that I am not writing or being a mom, I love to cook and read.  I will read just about anything someone hands to me.  I am a member (read: addict) of Paperback Swap.  I also enjoy papercrafting.  I want to learn quilling at some point, and I love to scrapbook.  I am addicted to chocolate.

Before becoming a writer, I wanted to be (in order): a 911 operator (I was 6), the owner of a horse ranch/orphanage facility, a writer, a singer/musician, a high school history teacher, a chef,  a forensic psychologist, a clinical psychologist, a child psychologist, and an elementary school teacher.  My previous jobs include a cook at Applebee’s, a clerk at a grocery store (also making subs and serving ice cream), cooking at a ski resort, and working on a few farms.  I think I liked the farm work best, for the same people I enjoy working at home.  Working with too many other people is annoying. On the farm, it was pretty much just me and the cows.

I have two other blogs, both focusing on parenting.

Mommy Moments

My Momaroo Blog

Feel free to follow me at these locations, too.  I’ll be posting these links on the main page, along with links to some of my writing, within the next week or so.  I will be back on Monday with the very first business post.  Until then..

The First Post

I have been putting off working on this blog for a couple weeks.  I wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to go in. There are a lot of possibilities for a writing mom blog.  I knew I wanted it to be professional, but not how I wanted to set it up.

Today, I did some planning.  Part of my 101 in 1001 goals (see here) is to have a work-related blog.  Today is kind of quiet, and it seemed like a good time to get this done.

I began thinking about the sort of readers I wanted to attract.  Mostly moms, like me, who write for a living, or even part time.  I know a lot of these writers have aspirations to someday write a work of fiction.  I know I do.  A lot of them are great writers who want to improve their craft. So, how could I reach out to these other moms?

I planned out for four blogs a week, set up like this:

Monday: Business information and tips

Wednesday: Writing mom life

Friday: Back to the Basics — Writing tips

Saturday: Fiction and other ‘fun’ writing.

That leaves me some days for writing about whatever strikes my fancy, but provides me with enough structure to avoid those “Nothing to write about” days.

I’ll probably kick things off officially with an introduction page in another day or so, and then launch the writing goodness on Monday.

‘Til then..