by Catherine L. Tully

I hate to admit this, but I get more done when I get up early. Much as I love being a night person, when I get out of bed at a decent hour and get moving, I simply am more effecient. So my advice to you is even though you can sleep until you wake up naturally–it’s a better move to set an alarm.

And yes. I know that is what people with a day job do.

Want some more “icky” advice? Here are some unpopular truths about freelancing:

+ Keeping a schedule is better than winging it. You can wing it occasionally, but if you don’t create patterns for yourself, you will have a hard time keeping up with everything you have to do.

+ You have to spend time marketing yourself. This means more than social networking time on Twitter and Facebook. This means developing quality relationships with other writers. It means taking the extra time to get to know your editors a bit and ask them how things are going once in a while. Relationships mean a lot in this business.

+ You really don’t need the newest toys. Ooh. I know. This one hurts. But it’s true. The fact of the matter is–your old laptop will probably work for a long time…so you can pass on that cool, compact netbook. You really don’t have to buy that new digital camera. And you probably can get by without a second monitor. It’s easy to overspend on gear that you don’t really need to do your job.

I was going to write some more on this subject…

But I think that’s enough truth for the day. Don’t you?