Setting Up a Successful Home Office

The lure of working at home is glamorous and enticing. You imagine yourself lounging in your pajamas, working at your leisure and bringing in the bucks.

Reality check! Working at home may be convenient and for some even lucrative, but if you don't treat it as a job, you will not be successful.

Freelance writer, editor, and publisher, Suzanne James, talks often about her home based business -and how to be successful in your own- in her blog at Writing Up and the one thing she emphasizes is that working at home is a Business and should be treated as such.

Here are some tips on setting up and maintaining a home office:

* Have a room of your own. If you can't have an entire room, then set apart a specific place and time to work. In the real world, you go to work 4 to 8 hours out of each day. If you don't set aside specific work hours you'll find yourself interrupted with all sorts of daily household duties as well as being called upon by family and friends for favors or unscheduled chats. This can wreak havoc on a writing career.

*Be comfortable. For some this means working in your pajamas, for others it means casual business attire and yet for others, the mode is jeans and tee shirt. Whatever your definition of comfortable, it's okay, as long as you are working.

*Invest in a spacious desk, a good chair and possibly a filing cabinet. If you have no need for a filing cabinet yet at least invest in an expandable 1-31 and/or alphabetical file folder to keep track of writing assignments. You can file them by due date or by company name. These are also good for filing submission guidelines and/or calls for submissions you receive, therefore always providing you with something to work on.

*Set up spreadsheets to record your income and expenses for tax purposes.

*Keep a folder (similar to a coupon holder) for all receipts (postage, paper, ink, etc) also for tax purposes.