Happy new year to all. I hope the holidays treated you well. In the first week of 2012, I want to talk about goals. In 2011, I made a major transition in my writing by moving from mostly content mills to primarily professional blogging for my income. In 2012, I want to capitalize on the free time and portfolio this has given me. This year, I want to…

• Increase the readership of this blog by a factor of 10. I currently get 10 to 20 page views daily. I’d like that to go up to 100 to 200.
• Find a publisher for my nearly finished childrens’ book.
• Self-publish at least one nonfiction book.
• Increase my presence in national magazines.
• Help more of you all create the life you want through freelance writing.

I’ll report from time to time on my progress and the processes I use to compete each of these goals.

How about you? What are your writing goals for 2012? What do you already have in place to make them happen? How can I help?

Thanks for listening.

As you might tell from some of my earlier posts — and my running campaign to get “First Person Shooter” games renamed to the more accurate “Second Person Shooter” — I’m sort of a grammar geek. I’m afraid I’ll find no cure, since I’m married to an English teacher.

Which is why I find Super Grammar so much fun. This is a relatively new grammar site that assigns a colorful superhero to the most important grammar terms. The combination of illustration and super power gives students a powerful mnemonic for remembering what each part of speech does. The silly, colorful presentation keeps learners engaged in what can be a dry subject.

My wife uses it to help her ESL (English as a Second Langage) students catch up with their peers. I read their posts simply because it’s really well done.

Seriously, check it out.

And happy new year.

Not safe for work. Not safe for children. Not safe for your mind, in many cases.

Damn You Autocorrect brings the best of text fails produced by autocorrect’s habit of assuming your phone is smarter than you are.

Second warning: language, sexual situations and general vulgarity are the way of this site. Don’t click if such things bother you.

http://damnyouautocorrect.com/

One week from right now (with adjustments for the international date line) my family puts our boots on the soil of New Zealand. We’ll be there for 10 days, enjoying 70 degree heat in the middle of American winter. We’ll visit with good friends who currently call the north island home. We’ll camp, visit Hobbiton, ride a ferry, swim and generally cause a whole lot of trouble.

Vacation as a freelancer is complicated, but you can make it work out for the best. I talked about it at some length in an earlier post.  If you can’t be bothered to read it, the upshot was freelancers make “vacation time” by working ahead of our financial needs. Once I accumulate enough extra cash — off I go.

Tools exist to help us do this. For example, I wrote this post on the 14th. WordPress allows scheduling of posts in advance, which I’m using to keep the blog going during my absence.

So on one hand, as a freelancer I get unlimited time off — assuming I’m willing to do work on a compressed schedule.

On the other, though, a freelancer never has time off. Never. I guarantee you that throughout my vacation I will consistently “noodle” on projects, take notes and otherwise give mental space to my writing. I’ll tweak my current fiction project. I’ll check email. I’ll plan my 2012 schedule.

It’s part of the life — and a trait of anybody who wants to succeed as a small business owner.

Not necessarily a bad thing. Not necessarily a good thing. Just a facet of freelancing you should know about if you’re thinking about this work-life choice.

Thanks for listening.

I’ve written before about the exciting New Pulp Era in which we writers live. Publishing is cheap. New media is opening all kinds of venues to display — and make a living from — our work. Despite a lot of uncertainty in traditional publishing, it’s a great time to be a working writer.

One example of this is the PodioBooks website. Founder Evo Terra and his team help “underpublished” authors find a home for their work. It breaks down like this:

Authors record individual chapters or sections of their books, which they post on Podiobooks.com as a series of podcasts.

Users can download them for free — or for a nominal donation. Fans can also download complete copies of the novels for a small fee. The overwhelming majority of those fees go straight to the authors.

The service is free, though the site will hook you up with professional editors, readers and experts if you like.

It’s an intriguing model, which has been successful for the past few years. In 2012, I plan to put some of the stories from my fiction blog up there, to see how it works out.

Meanwhile, download some fiction. It’s a pretty cool idea.  You can also listen to an in-depth interview of Mr. Terra by “Grammar Girl” Mignon Fogarty.