Long-time freelance writer Gwen Moran offers some great insights into this process in a Q&A that’s up on The Renegade Writer blog.

Moran is a columnist for Entrepreneur, and has written for publications such as Woman’s Day, On Wall Street and Newsweek.com. She’s the co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Business Plans.

According to Moran, the first step in career planning is picturing your ideal end result. In the Q&A she says:

Do you want to work for a certain type of publication? Earn a certain amount of money? Break into a specific niche? Once you’ve defined where you want your business to go, then you can back out the steps you need to get you there. You can begin honing topics and pitches for a specific publication or start targeting clients who understand the value that you provide in exchange for a healthy rate.

If you’re interested in learning more, Moran will be teaching an online course called Build the Freelance Writing Business You Want, at The Renegade Writer. The six-week course begins Oct. 7 and costs $250 for the premium version with six weeks of e-mail support or $150 for the basic version with no e-mail support. Find out more details on the Website.

Jane is Jane Boursaw, and she’s the creative force behind a package of entertainment industry writing ventures that includes weekly and monthly syndicated columns, blogs and her Website, Reel Life with Jane. She’s such a hit, this week Mediabistro.com ran a profile of Boursaw*, calling her a “blogging blockbuster.” (*You need to be a Mediabistro AvantGuild member to read the entire profile.)

One thing novice freelancers hear a lot is how important it is to find a niche or establish a beat. Boursaw is an excellent example of someone who’s done that – and then some.

Five years ago, Boursaw had a typical freelance career writing stories on a piecemeal basis. According to the Mediabistro Q&A written by E. B. Boyd, Boursaw had an “aha” moment and decided to focus her writing efforts on her life-long passion for movies and TV. She started writing family-friendly movie reviews and slowly built up a stable of publications that bought them on a weekly or monthly basis. Today, Boursaw’s reviews are syndicated in more than 300 publications nationwide. She also maintains five blogs, including Film Gecko, which she writes for B5 Media, a Toronto new media network that operates more than 325 paid blogs.

If that’s not enough, Boursaw writes celebrity profiles for in-flights and other magazines, including a recent profile of Hayden Panettiere for Latitudes.

Boursaw’s secrets: she works hard, markets constantly, has a professionally designed Website that she updates constantly. She’s a regular on a variety of freelance writer message boards, including Freelance Success. And she lives about as far away from Hollywood as you can get, in Traverse City, Michigan, with her husband and two kids.

Bravo Jane!