What should authors review every month?
- A monthly review keeps a writing career on course with little overhead.
- Review five areas: draft progress, revenue, outreach, deadlines, expenses.
- Monthly is frequent enough to catch drift, rare enough to stay light.
- The point is course-correction, not a full audit.
- A consistent template makes the review fast.
Review five things every month: draft progress (are you on pace), revenue (what came in and from where), outreach (queries, reviewers, podcasts, partnerships in motion), upcoming deadlines (what is due in the next 30-60 days), and expenses (what you spent and on what). This is a short, repeatable check-in, not a full audit — frequent enough to catch problems while they are small, light enough that you will actually keep doing it.
Chapter i·Why it matters
Writing careers go off course slowly — a draft that quietly falls behind, expenses that creep, an outreach pipeline that empties — and none of these are visible day to day. A monthly review surfaces the drift while it is still cheap to fix. Keeping it to five areas and a fixed template is what makes it sustainable; an elaborate review gets skipped, and a skipped review catches nothing.
Chapter ii·What to include
- Draft progress against your target pace.
- Revenue by source for the month.
- Outreach activity and pipeline status.
- Deadlines due in the next 30-60 days.
- Expenses logged and categorized.
- A fixed template so the review takes under an hour.
Chapter iii·Example
On the first of each month an author runs the same one-page review: words drafted versus goal, royalties by platform, reviewers and podcasts in the pipeline, deadlines in the next two months, and the month's expenses. In March it flags that her draft is two weeks behind and her ad spend has crept up. Both are easy fixes in March that would have been crises by June.
Chapter iv·Related questions
WriteLoom's author dashboard pulls draft progress, revenue, outreach, and deadlines into one view, so your monthly review takes minutes.
See your dashboard