I recently heard of a writer who earns $600K annually; he works about 70 hours a week and says he wouldn’t have it any other way. I know another writer who writes for a regional parenting magazine as a springboard to develop clips before approaching bigger markets. This allows her ample time to rekindle her love of fiction writing and to tend to her two young children.

Which of these writers is more successful? If you were to ask them, they’d both offer compelling arguments. Both are pursuing their passions in ways that satisfy them. Each yields specific but very different financial, emotional, and professional rewards.

During the month of June, we’re going to be examining what it means to be successful as a writer. Does merely getting paid count? The amount per word? The number of hits and comments to your blog? How about landing that first book deal? And while money certainly isn’t everything, for how much longer must the writing profession fall under that stereotypical beret of the "starving artist?"

We’ll feature interviews with writers who honed their own personal definitions of success and share some of our own experiences in this pursuit.

You may have noticed that we’ve taken down the message boards for now, but in the meantime, comments to our posts are open again. Feel free to share your thoughts and your own success stories, big, small, lucky, or hard-won. And look for more frequents posts and interviews this month!

–Toni

Read our interview with freelancer and mother Diana Burrell, author of The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success.

That would improve your writing business, or your writing process in general.

It’s a new year, and everyone’s already anxious to retire the word "resolution" until December 31st. But while resolutions may seem fated to dissolve faster than Alka Seltzer, tiny, incremental changes actually feel do-able.

January’s theme at From Diapers to Deadlines is "New Year, New Plan." And we’re starting off by helping you derive a workable plan, not some over-stuffed, insurmountable to-do list you’ll never accomplish in a reasonable way. Realistic, small, coherent steps to get you thinking clearly about where you really want to take your writing business. And tools to help get you there.

So let’s start off gently. Ask yourself: what one thing could you do this week to improve your writing?

Don’t pick a whole "program" or convoluted "system." ONE THING. Ditch the "overhaul your entire existence" attitude the media sells during this time of year and just pick one thing and try it for a week. Then come back here and tell us how it worked for you and whether you think you’ll keep it up, and when you’ll pick your next ONE THING.

Here’s one I’m doing: I’m starting assignments right when I get them instead of waiting a bit, sometimes until the day before deadline, as I’ve been known to do with my monthly parenting columns. I have a whole month to write the column, and yet I’m often scrambling to hammer one out the day before deadline. This year, I wrote two columns when I had a couple of free hours, clearing the boards so I could take on other stuff, and reducing my stress levels, too.

Here are some other ideas:

–Spend 30 minutes catching up on filing or tracking expenses

–Work on existing projects before checking e-mail or message boards in the morning

–Spend 15 minutes a day brainstorming new ideas (for: queries, markets, that next chapter, that first draft)

–Tidy your desk every night as you turn off your computer

–Find one thing you can let go of for one week (lurking on message boards, that reality TV show), and spend that time writing instead

–Start each week or month with a flurry of pitches, challenging yourself to see how many you can do.

When you’ve settled on your ONE THING, let us know how it worked for you. Post a comment here, or visit our message boards and talk about how it’s going.

Have a great weekend! And look from a post from Meagan this Monday.

Toni

We’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your progress, add your insights, or ask questions on our message boards. Click here to comment!

We are so excited to have you join us in the launch of From Diapers to Deadlines, a web resource for parents who write professionally–or aim to. It’s our goal to provide you with the support, encouragement, and advice you need to balance two big jobs–professional writing and parenting.

From Diapers to Deadlines is for all parents who are also working writers, whether your oldest baby is still in diapers or your youngest child is a senior in high school; whether you came to writing after having children or are a veteran writer trying to figure out how to balance a baby in the mix; and whether you write books, freelance for magazines and newspapers, or write press releases for corporations. In short, if you’re a working writer–or an aspiring working writer–and a parent, this is the place for you.

Each month we’ll feature a mix of new content and evergreen resources–all FREE–to help you shape your career and balance your life, like inspiring interviews with writing parents and other experts, information-rich podcasts you can listen to at your convenience (say, while driving carpool), weekly challenges to give you a kick in the pants, and a message board where you can meet up with other writing parents to talk about challenges and acheivements, to ask for advice, and to discuss the finer points in the art of balancing a family with a writing career. If you’re a veteran writer, we hope you’ll stop in the message boards to discuss career ups and downs with other established professionals. If you’re just getting started, don’t be shy–poke around, read the content, and introduce yourself! We look forward to watching your career grow.

January’s theme is New Year, New Plan. We’ll be talking about creating a business plan for your writing career, giving your income a boost, and how writers can feed both their families and their souls through their work. Read our interview with accomplished writer and mother Jennifer Margulis and, later this month, Kelly James-Enger; participate in our weekly challenges, check in for regular updates to our blog, look for a podcast around the middle of the month, and visit the message boards, where we’ll be discussing all these topics and much more. And during the month of January, anyone who registers a username and posts on the message boards will be automatically entered in a drawing for a FREE copy of Kelly James-Enger’s book, Six-Figure Freelancing!

Feel free to visit the About Us page to find out more about Toni and Meagan and how this site came to be. As we add more content, the blog posts will be separated into the categories on the left, and we will archive old content so you can find it in the future. If you’d like to be notified when we update the site, please click the "subscribe" link, or add us to your RSS feeds.

Again, welcome. We’re so glad to have you here.

We’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your progress, add your insights, or ask questions on our message boards. Click here to comment!