Every successful organization I’ve been involved with was committed to benchmarking and measurement — and had the kind of leadership that wasn’t afraid to make numbers a key factor in deciding which projects to continue and which projects to revamp or scrap.
Hugo Award-winning science fiction writer David Levine shows how a professional writer can take a fearless look at his or her year-end numbers.
I don’t know if I have the courage to make my numbers public, but, following David’s lead, I’ll be tallying up my 2006 results for fiction, client blogging and websites, and personal blogs.
And here I thought you meant the number of dollars he earned as a writer, not the number of words he wrote. I track the former, not the latter.
And, yes, it was a good year.
Nice blog.
Ron
Good point, Ron. While hours translate into dollars fairly straightforwardly for tech and marketing writers and other freelancers, it’s a whole other ballgame for fiction writers like David. There the span between writing the words and getting paid for them can be a few calendar years. I applaud David’s approach to tracking words written, and also submissions and rejections. It’s not uncommon for fiction to be rejected half a dozen times before a sale is made. (I write web content *and* fiction, so am interested in good practices for both businesses models.)