Where is your growth potential?

Yesterday I talked a bit about the research I'm doing for the new Writing Career Coach product. One thing I've had to ask myself is, as a writer, where is my greatest growth potential.

Like many of you I have a variety of legs to my platform. I write articles for E-zines and magazines. I write/contribute to 3 blogs as well as writing articles for online journals. I speak to writer's groups and business groups regularly and teach webinars. I also have newsletters that I distribute. This is in addition to my business which is coaching aspiring writers, writing fiction and writing non-fiction.

When you are a writer, especially one working to breakout in book length writing, you must always balance your need to write with your need to pay your bills. For most people that means you work, work, work for pay until you have something paid for, then you start working on your writing until you find you need money again...then the cycle repeats. Many people don't advance because they are not looking at where their real growth potential is. Furthermore, they aren't willing to invest the time to build up the weaker areas to reach their dreams. By that I mean people who want to write novels may not be strong at that YET but what are they doing to make that their strength?

Admittedly, this is quite a bit to juggle. Most of us have responsibilities beyond simply writing our stories. It can, at times, seem overwhelming. That is why it is so important to find where your current growth potential is, then build on your strength. Once you feel confident in that area you can work on the next. My writing career has been built almost entirely in 30 minute increments. I never had the time to sit down for hours and write. Therefore, I had to take advantage of 30 minutes of quiet, 30 minutes where I could read, 30 minute lessons.

Find where your growth potential is and build on it.

Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at www.WritingCareerCoach.com
Tiffany is a speaker and teacher. Find out about available topics for your group's next event.
Learn more about Tiffany's Marketing techniques on her main blog.
Common-sense money management is free at The Balanced Life website. [www.TheBalancedLife.com]
Read Tiffany's award winning manuscript "A Face in the Shadow" on her fiction blog. [http://tiffanycolter.blogspot.com]
She writes a blog for the Christian writer Tuesdays at Writer's Rest.[http://writersrest.blogspot.com]

Learn from the pros

Today I want to reflect on the blog posting with Robin Jones Gunn. Here we had the author of 70 books who has continued for years in an industry that isn't always loyal.

Not only that but she said that when she started it was series focused and she has been able to stay a writer during the shift to a more author focused marketing strategy.

That made me think even more about what is necessary to success in our chosen profession [mine being writing]. It was not only that she was great at what she did, but it was because she was flexible enough to adapt to change.

What changes are you seeing in your own life? Are you lamenting the change or are you looking at ways to thrive in your new environment?

Your answer to that question could be crucial to your success.

Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at www.WritingCareerCoach.com
Learn more about Tiffany's Marketing techniques on her main blog.
Common-sense money management is free at The Balanced Life website.
Read Tiffany's award winning manuscript "A Face in the Shadow" on her fiction blog.
She writes a blog for the Christian writer Tuesdays at Writer's Rest.

Try new things

How is it that some people simply seem to be successful no matter what they do. As I continue to read about successful people and study business and marketing it seems that there is this 'inner circle' of people who have the midas touch.

Everything they touch works.

I also begin to see a pattern among the most successful individuals. They know the basic success formula but they also recognize that small tweak that seems to send them over the top.

So, recently when "Blog Rush" shut down I was faced with a dilemma. How to replace that traffic.

I was slow to decide on a new way. I was so focused on training to take over the speakers' bureau and work on my book projects that I simply wasn't taking the time to find something new. Besides that I had all of you telling others about my website.

But I'm not happy with my level of growth. As a writing career coach I've always taught you to build platform and leverage. While many of you enjoy my content and email me to tell me what you've learned, the word was not getting out as much as I would like.

So, I needed to give you a tool to leverage that.

I have recently caught up to the times and will now include a 'digg' and 'del.icio.us' link at the bottom of each blog posting.

"Why?"

Because, as my husband pointed out, I need to give my readers the tools they need to let others know about the blog. You may not know other writers but other writers are interested in learning about what we talk about here [I know this because of the large volume of email I field daily.]

So, even if you don't personally use digg all you need to do is click the digg link to let people know that this was a useful post.

If you use del.icio.us then you can share the bookmark with others in your community of writers or business owners.

Now, I've shared some ways I'm adjusting to continue to meet growth benchmarks, look at your own writing business, blogging, small business and marketing. What areas do you see shrinking? What new things must you do to continue a positive growth trend?

Did you find this useful: Let Digg know


Do you want to follow this on del.icio.us?: Bookmark it

The Tax Man

Well it’s tax time again. All across America people are collecting receipts, gathering W-2s and 1099s and getting ready to make their monthly pilgrimage to the tax preparer, CPA or Kitchen table.
In honor of this time of year today’s blog is about getting taxes ready.
I recently found out about a great article for writers about receipts and deductions specifically for writers. Here is the link:

http://www.artstaxinfo.com/WRITERS/WRITER~3.PDF

Some of these deductions available surprised me. I’d suggest you print this off and keep it with your receipts for 2009 so you are ready next year when the tax man come.

That’s all for today. I have taxes to prepare.

Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at www.WritingCareerCoach.com
Learn more about Tiffany's Marketing techniques on her main blog.
Read Tiffany's award winning manuscript "A Face in the Shadow" on her fiction blog.
She writes a blog for the Christian writer Tuesdays at Writer's Rest.