All too true.

I’ve spent two weeks writing short tsories that either never sold, or that brought in only a couple of hundred dollars, and I’ve spent four hours writing short stories that sold for a thousand dollars or more the first time out.

I generally know roughly what an article will bring in before writing it, but sometimes things happen you can’t simply can’t control, such as a magazine folding before a piece is published.

I learned my lesson quite a few years ago. I sat down and wrote a letter to the editor of our local paper. Because it was just a letter to the editor, and no pay was involved, I wrote it faster than usual, maybe twenty minutes, but it was still five hundred words.

The editor liked it enough to publish it as a guest column, rather than a letter. The editor of a magazine happened to read that column, and bought reprint rights. Another editor at a larger magazine bought reprint rights after reading the piece in the first magazine.

That little letter to the editor sold over and over and over, and has, to date, earned me several thousand dollars, all for a piece that I banged out in nothing flat, and never intended to sell at all.

All you can do is count such events as gravy, slide the unexpected money into your business, and go back to planning, even if you can hear God chuckling in the background.

The plan that’s important for many of us business owners is a living, breathing plan we can change as we go along. I use the One Page Business Plan(R) There are books for creative entrepreurs, business women, financial services professionals, non profits and more.

Longer plans, that are usually created for funding are available online both free and fee based. (I tell my clients to get focused first and create a one page plan… then create the longer plan)

http://www.TheResourceQueen.com/businessplans.html is a page I created that has resources for all types of plans and there are samples there, too.