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If you are a writer like myself and have considered yourself one for long enough to be halfway confident in your ability to put coherent sentences together to form decently compelling prose, you are probably ridiculously disorganized. It comes with the territory. The imaginary guild of aspiring writers requires that all properly serious writers live in a disheveled mess with half finished work on every flat surface and only one clean spoon, sitting precariously atop a coffee maker.

It is this very trait that keeps so many writers from actually becoming freelance writers and making money from their talents. If you can't find your computer under the debris, how can you reply to the emails that are starting to pile up? Not a good combination.

For those of you who are only partway down the road to freelance writing, this is the first thing you need to tackle. Fortunately though, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it and you can get a few pointers right here on those first steps.

I started my freelancing career by overdoing just about everything. I wrote massive schedules that were often two pages long - longer than most of the articles I had to write for any given day. I managed to overcome that phase rather quickly though and started getting to the actual task of my writing much faster.

The first thing I learned was that you have to peel away all of the extra stuff. You haven't even started writing yet, so don't go too far. Do away with any extra curricular writing and focus all of your energy in getting your things straightened out for your first project.

1. Limit personal projects. Blogs are a great way to relieve stress and seek help online, but when you are just getting started, you're just splitting your focus too many ways. Keep a blog so everything you write is not work related, but try not to post four or five times a day while procrastinating.

2. Set aside designated time for each task you need to accomplish. At first, you will likely still have another job. Don't try to fit in a few minutes of research or writing every day after work. Set aside two hour blocks before or after work or on the weekends.

3. Clean your home. This seems unrelated, but you have to trust me when I say: as soon as your home becomes your office, your productivity is directly affected by how clean it is. Dust causes allergies, dirty dishes force you to go buy meals. Unfiled papers waste time when you are trying to work. You wouldn't leave your desk at work cluttered with garbage

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