And I shall write...

I entered the world of freelance writing for PAY! in July 2008. While I didn't think about it at the time, it was actually July 8 - my ex-husband's birthday. So now that date is stuck in my head every time I look at my AC profile.

Wait - it's not AC anymore. It's the Yahoo! Contributor Network. What a journey it's been. My discipline sucks, always has. I'm the worst boss I've ever had unless you take porch breaks with cocktails into account. But I learned something this morning - I have a total of 401 pieces of content across the Yahoo! family of websites. Only one is a poem - a haiku I wrote for a contest over the summer. Out of that 401, I wrote 208 of them in 2010. That's an average of just over 17 articles a month. Considering that I wrote 40 articles at Y!CN in November I realize that I've got the skills if I just apply myself.

November was an interesting month writing-wise. I had a lot of great assignments, try-outs for some regular Yahoo! TV positions - I scored the 4 shows I watch regularly! I also started writing for Bright Hub at the end of October and was still on probation through November and did 5 articles for them. I didn't do as well at BH in December but I've got a lot of external factors weighing on me right now. I was also accepted into the Gather Socialwrite program and I was really excited about it. Now - they've changed the platform and I'm just not sure I'm as excited as I was originally.

So here it is - my writing goals for 2011 based on what I really accomplished in 2010.

1) 540 articles. This is realistic because I did write 45 articles in November without hurting myself too much. I plan to spread this over each of the sites I write for.

2) Achieve Hot 500 status each month at Y!CN - I hit it for the first time in November and my December was a bit better with really no hot news. My 2-year old Christmas articles carried the weight and are testimony to the power of residuals. I'd love to be Hot 100 but I tend to set realistic goals.

3) Improve my news writing so that I can score some Yahoo! News assignments. Sadly, I have a local murder trial to cover but it will be a first person perspective.

4) Work on my local work to hopefully score a Yahoo! Local beat.

Simple, achievable goals. I can do this.