Organization tips for authors and illustrators -

New year new organization habits right? Here are a few organization tips for authors and illustrators (or any freelancing individual) to help get their “office” in order.

Organization tips for authors and illustrators

Clean out your desk. Seriously. Old business cards, gose paper (good on one side), outdated notes-to-self, pens which have run dry…they all need to go.
Check outstanding invoices. Do you have money owing from last year’s work? Resend those invoices. Track down the payment. Get that money into your account!
Set up a new calendar. Whether it be google calendar, iphone calendar or regular ol’ paper agenda (got mine at dollarama – and it’s AWESOME for $4).
Sort old emails. You know the December emails you will “look at later” well, honey…it’s later.
Delete/recycle files. It’s a pain. You never want to do it. It’s a great thing to procrastinate. But it’s time. Go through your files (downloads, documents, pictures, music, videos) and delete the old and outdated. I, personally, have +5 versions of a single manuscript because I’d “save as” (which is a fab thing to do when you are working on a work-in-progress). But at some point, you only need the latest version. Also, time to go old school and dump/recycle the outdated paper files (I had a THICK folder of old cheques and invoices which did not need a trip into 2023).