Comments on: What are your biggest challenges?

By: Michelle

Michelle — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:37:54 +0000

Lately my biggest challenge has been lack of air conditioning!! Seriously, I’m finding being in a hot house drains my energy faster than I would have guesssed. By the time noon rolls around, I want nothing to do with this hot laptop and whatever is contained on it.

I’ve got a set schedule I work from — but some days that’s more restricting than helpful. Working/writing from home has to be flexible. If an email comes in that needs attention I need to drop what I’m doing and deal with it — not work it into a schedule.

By: Writing Links

Writing Links — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:36:40 +0000

[...] What are your biggest challenges? — My biggest challenge as a writer is time management, which is probably why I write about it as often as I do. [...]

By: Katharine Swan

Katharine Swan — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 19:57:31 +0000

The internet is one of my biggest challenges. I am too easily distracted. For example, I was writing a set of articles recently on craft projects that use men’s ties. In the first hour, I did about ten minutes of research, twenty minutes of planning my own tie projects (which I have never even dreamed of doing until now), fifteen minutes of looking for baby quilt patterns (for me, not the article), and another fifteen minutes of shopping for purses made out of men’s ties online.

That kind of thing happens more often than I would like to admit…

Email is another challenge, as I have a tendency to stop whatever I am doing in order to spend 20 minutes answering an email as soon as it comes in.

Possibly my biggest challenge, though, is my husband. I am not always done with my work when he gets home, and I find it next to impossible to work when he is around. So my good intentions of working overtime to finish a project almost always blow up in my face.

By: Kim

Kim — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:18:50 +0000

Now that I am starting to see some fruits of my labor – getting some jobs – I realize that I must stop procrastinating and establish some sort of schedule. I am also guilty of allowing excessive email checks and the wonders of the internet to distract me.

By: Morgan

Morgan — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 23:25:25 +0000

Biggest challenge is probably also my biggest character flaw: laziness. The Internet and email also constantly distract me. I’d never get any fiction writing done if it wasn’t for my AlphaSmart.

By: carla

carla — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 22:21:41 +0000

TOP TEN (in random order):
1. self-discipline
2. my three-year-old
3. facebook
4. people phoning me (call display is great: i’m starting to only answer if it’s my husband calling from work–he can only talk for about two minutes!)
5. hunting for more freelance writing jobs
6. daydreaming
7. my pregnancy (i’d rather sleep than work)
8. inability to drag my butt out of bed in the morning
9. web surfing
10. no real “office” for working

By: Robin

Robin — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 17:37:47 +0000

My biggest challenge is definitely the Internet. I can sit down to work and suddenly an entire hour has gone by.

If I’m honest about it, the problem really is self discipline. Not the Internet.

By: Analog Stix dot com

Analog Stix dot com — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 17:06:10 +0000

Since I decided to take the plunge into freelance writing, I would say my biggest challenge is generating income in between projects. I started http://www.analogstix.com to generate income through ad impressions, but that’s still in the early stages of attracting visitors and not yielding a whole lot of income.

Also video game blogging is a very niche market, but blogging in itself has become saturated, so another challenge is making myself stand out to become more attractive to potential clients.

By: Beth

Beth — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:20:47 +0000

Making myself stop working is my greatest challenge. It is not that clients impose this on me; I do it to myself. Part of it is that it’s my business now, not some big bad boss’s agenda, so not only do I enjoy it all, but I feel an extra sense of responsibility in everything I do.

I recently read Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles, and he suggests marking off days on your calendar as free days, focus days and buffer days. I have been trying to do this and it’s helped a little. When you have a free day, which he suggests once a week + vacations (which I always end up working on as well), you don’t check e-mail, or clean your house, or anything other than do the things you enjoy. Buffer days are days that involve doing the things you have to do to free yourself up to be more productive. Focus days are days when you focus completely on your passion, in this case, freelance writing and working on projects that will take me where I want to go.

By: allycat

allycat — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 15:31:41 +0000

My kids. And MySpace. No really, it is my children. They adore me. They want me 24/7. Its enough to develop a narcissm issue