Organizing Writing Finances

By Susanna Carr © 2003 

I’m a very disorganized person.  Very.  This became a major problem when the clutter pulled my attention away from writing.  Radical overhauls always turned out to be recipes for instant failure.  But then I had an epiphany:  I didn’t have to change everything. 

That realization made a difference.  Over the years, I made a few changes in my way of thinking that didn’t cause too much pain.  I’m still disorganized, but it doesn’t cause a crisis.  How can that be?  Here are a few easy examples when it comes to the financial record-keeping aspect in writing:

1.  Separate

Keep your writing-related money and your expenditures separate from the family/personal checking and savings account.  Whether published or unpublished, every writer has expenses. 

2.  Designate

Assign one credit or charge card for writing expenses only.  Think you don’t really need one for writing expenses?  You’ll be surprised how many times a credit card is required.   Not only for flights and hotel reservations when you attend a conference, but also to buy domain names, pay for hosting service or purchase anything online.  Not to mention all those visits to the post office….

3. File

It used to be that I would start out with a color-coded filing system every January.  By summertime, the system resembled a mountain of paper.   We won’t even go into my disastrous attempt to computerize everything. 

Now I know it’s all right not to be ambitious when it comes to filing.  All I need are four manila folders.  One folder holds the copies I made of the payments I received.  The second is for my receipts.  The third contains my bank statements and I keep my tax stuff in the fourth folder. That’s it, and it works surprisingly well.  I probably could whittle it down to two folders, but I believe in the ‘don’t fix what isn’t broken’ theory.

Consider using one or all of these tips when you want to keep everything in order.  I’m not saying that the angels will sing every time you open your filing cabinet.  I can’t even guarantee that you’ll see the surface of your desk every day.  But you won’t have to set aside big chunks of time to attend to the financial paperwork.  And that will allow you to focus on the business of writing, which is what it’s really all about.