Pre-writing and scheduling blog posts and articles

One thing that being in college when trying to run my own business has taught me is a better sense of deadlines and pre-planning. As everyone who reads my blog knows, my business is freelance writing, and part of that involves blogging.

From the beginning of my freelance career, I have stockpiled ideas. But it is only in the last year that I started to schedule these ideas, so that more of them actually get written.

I did not notice this change in my operational procedure until last week. A couple of weeks ago, I had written down the writer's deadlines in a daily planner. I also jotted down the drop dates for the newspaper, and looked at the holidays and special events. This actually proved to be useful because I ended up having to contest the topic of two of my astrology columns. Bottom line, I did not want a column about love going out two days after Valentine's Day.

This awareness of time is also starting to bleed over into my school work. This is a good thing. For instance, at the end of the month I am helping someone move...it would be helpful if I was ahead in my homework before that happens.

On both this and my Golden Dawn blog, I have jotted down ideas and used the pre-scheduling function to stockpile them. The only disadvantage of this is there are going to be some ugly posts appearing if I suddenly die. On the Golden Dawn blog, I have over twenty-five ideas stockpiled.

I am also starting to pre-write and schedule posts. This is something I have learned many professional bloggers are doing. They find it easier to write a batch of posts all at once, and pre-schedule them; I am also finding it easier to do. If nothing else, it takes the some of the pressure off and allows me to focus on whatever is at the top of my priority list for the day. I am also beginning to pre-write certain columns, including my astrology column.

Pre-writing and pre-scheduling articles and posts is something that I wish I would have started doing sooner. Oh well, at least I am doing it now.