I’m such a luddite, Marisa, that I don’t understand your question. I do have a table of contents as a page. Is that what you mean? If there’s something else, please explain. I’d love to learn.

Thanks for the great comments, btw.

Best,
Kris

“What I love to do is put new words on the page. (Or, as my husband says, make things up.)” I enjoyed that, that’s funny! I hope to learn from your guide. Are there any point form to-the-point answers to questions? Such is the nature of the web…

Thanks for enlightening me, as you always do! These posts are incredible.

One other thing freelancers might also consider structuring for their survival is money.

When I went full-time freelance (as an indexer and writer) 12 years ago, my wife worked and got paid every 2 weeks, and so did I at my job. But we got paid on different weeks…so every Friday was a payday for one of us. I promised my wife that I wouldn’t miss a paycheck, and so far, I haven’t.

A few years ago I created a program that I presented to freelancers called Writing Your Own Paycheck. The point is simple. Figure out how much money you need to pay your bills every month, manage your debt, and treat yourself like your employer used to treat you–write yourself a paycheck on a regular schedule. I still pay myself every 2 weeks–and I stock pile any overages, and try to always have at least six months worth of paychecks stuck back. That includes taxes and IRA/SEP payments. There are formulas and the idea is a little more complex, but the gist of it is to write yourself a regular paycheck.

So–If I don’t have to worry about my paycheck this week…I can do my best work. That’s a big idea.

Of course, I always worry about money, about keeping the quality of my work high, and the demand for my services steady. But I don’t have to worry about making the house payment this Friday. The work that comes in today (in practice) should pay the house payment in 6 months.

Building the stockpile takes discipline, and keeping it there does too. But not any more discipline than determining how pages I need to write or index every day to meet my deadlines. Financial discipline is as important as any part of freelancing. If I can’t manage my money, I will not be around to provide the service to my clients (or books to my readers) that they have become accustomed to.

In the end, this system has freed me up so I can focus on the work, on getting more work, and maintaining a quality of life that I was sure the freelance life offered in the first place. Think about it, it makes the freelance life a little less scary and complicated.

I work with a few experts in trade for the stuff I really don’t feel competent doing or that take me way too much time. For example, I edit the books of a local corporate entity lawyer. He set up my corporations and keeps them all nice and legal, he answers my legal questions and checked over my boilerplate contract. And since he’s a best selling author, it doesn’t hurt to have my name in his acknowledgments for my editing either.

I also contract out to other writers. I’ve found I’m much better at bringing in business than getting it done. I get more work than I can handle. Rather than turn the work down, I contract to others who want the work but not the project management. I take a percentage off the top and come in at the editing stage before the product goes to the client. The important part here: I let the client know what I’m doing and who is working on the project. I think that’s pretty important.

But I never thought of doing either until I understood the ins and outs of my business.