I remember when I left the land of cubicles and fluorescent lighting, I was particularly pleased that I would no longer be subjected to performance reviews. It took a couple of years on my own to realize that they’re even more necessary in a freelance business than in the corporate one, because the bottom line is your bottom line!

So if you set up a quarterly performance review for yourself, you’ll find that you have a much better sense of how you’re doing, where your strengths are, and how you can improve. Here are five steps you can take to review your own performance and improve your freelance business:

1. Ask yourself the hard questions. What did I set out to do during this quarter?
   What actually happened … what were the actual results? Why did these results occur? What am I going to do to improve performance during the next quarter?
2. Based on your answers to those questions, make a list of wins (places where you met or exceeded your goals) and losses (places where you fell short). Obviously I am assuming that you do in fact have planned out goals, written them down, referred to them consistently. If you haven’t, then that’s your first task here!
3. Take your two lists and analyze them. Are these goals still relevant? If not, adjust them. What caused your failures? What caused your successes? How can you transfer more items from the losses column to the wins column?



4. Write out a plan that incorporates the goals you need to accomplish during the next quarter.
5. Now look at the reasons for your losses. This is the hardest part of your personal performance review. Were some of them under your control? Did laziness, lack of attention, not enough focus come into play? Whatever it was, this is something for you to target for the next quarter and bear in mind as you examine its goals.

Don’t forget also to reward yourself for the wins … a good performance review notes both success and failure. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Here are two photographs, very different from each other, but both evoke—in me, at least—an emotional response. Take a few minutes to look at them, and then consider using one or both as a writing prompt. You can find inspiration in the oddest places!

See what happens, and then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

One of the examples he used was writing.

I sat and thought about this for some time after the program was over. I think that most of us write, not because we woke up one morning and decided, “Hey! I think I’ll be a writer,” but rather because the difficulty wasn’t in writing, it was in not writing. We write because we cannot not write — which is a pretty good definition of an obsession.

But as time passes, other issues become part of our obsession. We enter the ongoing, never-ending process of trying to get published: the submissions, the rejections, the submissions, the rejections, a stream that going on forever. And even when success comes, we need to enter yet another world, the world of marketing, of getting the word out about our work, of making sure that people actually read it.

The obsession, in short, becomes a business.

It’s inevitable: I’m not here to tell you otherwise, and indeed if you follow Beyond The Elements of Style, you know that I spend a fair amount of time giving tips for the business end of what we do.

But here’s the thing. I got up especially early this morning, with plans to work on my novel-in-progress, and instead found myself all over the social media sites promoting two of my other novels. And wondered when it was that I stopped beginning my days with my creative self and started beginning them with my marketing self.

It’s essential, I think, to stand back from time to time and remember why we’re doing this. Refocus on the passion, the need to write, to tell a story, to communicate an emotion. Remember why we’re here.

For me, physical distance is always a way of getting grounded again. Even though I arguably live in paradise at the tip of Cape Cod, inspiration to any writer, I still go away several times a year, get away from my usual writing-space and my usual view and my usual routine. That’s why there are so many writer residencies always on offer all over the world: getting apart, becoming a stranger in a different land, helps us remember who we are where, as poet Miller Williams says, the spirit meets the bone. If you don’t travel, consider doing it.

Reading others’ tales of their passions and obsessions can also help you remember why you’re here. I keep a Toni Morrison quote on my writing-table: “I’m just trying to look at something without blinking,” she wrote, and it’s a reminder of my own calling in my own fiction.

Whatever you do — and you may be far more creative than I am in finding these ways to remember — make sure that you find a touchstone in some part of every day. It will keep you true to your calling, and true to yourself.

How else can you remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing? Share your thoughts here, and then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Yes and no. That blog title caught your attention, didn’t it?

And while most writers bemoan the fact, it’s still true that many if not most readers will indeed judge a book by its cover … and its title.

I am miserably bad at finding titles for my own work. I was young and stubborn when my first novel came out and I insisted on my version of the title—years later, I learned that the publisher had been right, but it was a little late then. My best title ever, The Illusionist, was a suggestion given by a friend. So what this all means is that I think a lot about titles.

Terri Marie has this to say about finding the right title:

The title of your book is the billboard for the words and ideas you are giving to people. Those four to seven words or so are most critical of all the words you write.

A dear friend of mine, John Harricharan, author of best-selling, “When You can Walk on Water, Take the Boat,” explained to me that the real title comes from within you, like the book. I finally understood that I did not “try” to write the book. It wrote itself. So too, will the title come from within you. What John meant, is that you must love the title you choose. Be confident with it. With that confidence, the energy of the book can come through, almost like a light shining through the window.

In other words, it does not matter so much what the actual title is. What matters is the feeling you have when you read, see or say the title. That’s the key.

Wow. Just a little pressure there. I wish I could have that upwelling of feeling about a title, but it’s never happened yet.

Fortunately for most of us, she goes on to offer some very practical advice:

1. Write down all possible titles. Anything and everything you can think of. You never know which phrase may catch and stick.
2. Pay attention to how YOU feel when you tell others your title. Do you feel proud, tentative, scared, stupid? The feeling you want is like a proud mother or father of your new little baby. Give it the best name you can. It will be called that name the rest of its life.
3. I also researched other titles on amazon. You don’t want a title that everyone has. It will get lost. You also don’t want a title so obscure or undescriptive that nothing will come up on a search.
4. It needs to have intrigue and yet be clear. “Things Your Priest Doesn’t Want You To Know,” would be intriguing. So would “Things Your (fill in the blank) Doesn’t Want You To Know.” We humans like to know what others are doing, thinking feeling etc.
5. Does your title help the reader to become a better person? We want to strive higher, yet it has to be an achievable goal without huge effort. If your title is “How to increase your IQ by 10 points, studying an extra 5 hours a day,” I’m not interested.
6. Sum up your book in one sentence. Write as many as you can of these one liners. If you get just one chance to give a message from your book to others, what would you say? That’s often all you get. Use it wisely.
7. When it all comes down to it, go with your gut.

Obviously a couple of these suggestions apply only to nonfiction books, but novelists can extrapolate what they say into the fiction realm.

Feeling better? I’m not. I currently have a novel in search of a title. While it’s true that the future publisher may change the title (and probably will), it’s still important to present something strong and compelling to the publisher. With this in mind, I narrowed my options down to two possibilities. I sent them out to my online writing community and asked for opinions, and they came back weighing in more or less equally for each of the two titles. Damn!

Over at Writing-World, John Floyd has some things to say about choosing the “right” title: it shouldn’t be dull, it should be easy to remember, it should be appropriate. Read his entire article for sources to jog your imagination.

And for a little fun, once you’ve got a title or two in mind, head over to Lulu’s title scorer to see how it might work for you!

In the meantime, I’m stuck with my title dilemma, none of my research having given me any definitive direction. I hope your quest goes better! And if you have any secrets, methods, or ideas about finding the right title, please share it here! Then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Her secret? It’s all in the scheduling.

These days, Anastasia charts out her free time so that blocks of it can be devoted to various projects and bring them to completion within her deadlines. Sounds a lot like the time issues that freelancers in general, and writers in particular, need to deal with every day!

Do you find yourself pulling an all-nighter when your deadlines are looming? Wasting time at the front end of a project and then scrambling to get caught up? Juggling several projects poorly so that none of them gets your full attention?

Scheduling may be your problem, too.

So let’s talk about creating a schedule that works for you … and your clients, as well!

The first step is recognizing when you work best. One of the freedoms of freelance work is the ability to choose your hours … so choose them! I’ve found that I am the most focused and the most energetic in the mornings, so I’m up early and at my desk before most people have even hit the first snooze. I have an artist friend who is starting to wind down and go to bed at about the time I’m waking up. We all have internal clocks that tell us when we’re at our bast: take advantage of that and schedule your most difficult, most intense work for when you’re at your best and brightest.

Block time out for social media. I’m serious. Facebook may keep you in touch with your virtual water cooler, but checking it all day is a time sink. On the other hand, social media is about the best marketing tool that many of us have, and using it consistently and correctly is a strong path to success. So block out some time and be armed with a list for what you want to accomplish during your social media marketing periods.

Speaking of periods, many people find it easier to work in increments, rather than all at once. There are a lot of good reasons to do this. It keeps your mind fresh and your body rested. It keeps you from developing tunnel vision around a project so that you’re less effective at it. Working in pre-determined blocks of time will allow you to step away from your work, do some stretches, drink some juice, and clear your head before continuing.

While you’re blocking time out, remember to reserve some for client interactions. Again, this can take up your whole day if you let it, so resolve to check your email once an hour, and set aside the next ten minutes for responding to those emails that need instant input. Put your telephone calls together, too, and let your clients know when you’re available to them … and, perhaps more importantly, unavailable!

Scheduling your work will keep you in charge of it … and keep it from being in charge of you! Try it, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!