Writing Goals for 2023

It’s that time of year again when I talk about my career and what I’ve learned! Work came down to the wire this year with two stories running right before Christmas and two more before the New Year. Overall, I pitched or was assigned 350 stories, almost doubling from last year.

This year had a lot of rejections and non-responses, which I’m learning to live with. But some stories came about in an interesting way. One, in particular, started with a Twitter response and led to a story in one of the UK’s biggest newspapers!

Some stories took a while to come to fruition, especially when a hotel I was writing about was delayed by a number of months. This will continue to be the case as stories are tied to news events. I wrote more print stories than ever this year and contributed photos to a book, which I’d love to do again.

I crossed off some of my bucket list outlets but there are more to come. New outlets for the year include Here, Atlas Obscura, Hemispheres, AARP, Gordon Drive, Delish, The Infatuation, Washington Post, Wine Enthusiast, The Telegraph, Punch, and CNN Travel. The highest rate I was paid was $2000 for online content for Explore Georgia and the lowest rate was $100 for Simply Buckhead, a local magazine.

For more writing goals from previous years, see the editions from 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. See almost all of my work on my Contently page and follow along on my professional website.

What Worked This Year

Pitching Often and Following Up

I’ve started to make Mondays my pitch and follow-up day because ideas are fresh in my mind. I’m also trying to be more thoughtful in terms of when to pitch what story. I have a long-running document at any given time of pitches still to be sent and the outlets they might be a good fit for. I also try to follow up after a week or two.

Finding Timely Angles

Editors are always looking for a timely angle or news hook to go with a pitch. For example, an anniversary is always a good time to send a pitch. I’ve also had good luck with stories that run parallel to what’s going on in the world like my 2020 story on polio and an upcoming story that is connected to a national park designation.

Branching Outside of Travel and the South

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I really followed my interests this year, which included more than the standard travel story with history and home decor. For Atlas Obscura, I wrote about my love of Rock City barn ads that I grew up seeing. For The Washington Post, I wrote about uranium glass. For Wine Enthusiast, I wrote about why we put dollar bills on bar walls. I also wrote about mudlarking for Apartment Therapy.

Following Editors on Twitter

I’m hesitant to join the mass exodus from Twitter because I’ve had such good luck finding work there. It’s where I connect with editors and see who is looking for stories. I’ve signed up for Mastodon but will probably stay on Twitter and Instagram if you want to follow me on either (@cairinthecity).

Attending In-Person Events

After the first few years of the pandemic, I’ll admit that I’ve become rusty when it comes to networking events. But this year I hit the ground running again, attending a number of conferences. I went to two that involved in-person pitching to editors, which was super intimidating but resulted in a number of stories.

Goals for 2023

Write More Print Stories

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My first writing job was for a newspaper, but until recently, I hadn’t done a lot of print work. That’s changed in the last year as I had a print story run every month from October to December. I’d like to continue this for the year as I already have them lined up for the first few months. I’ve also been getting them framed to hang on my gallery wall. I use Framebridge’s travel series and highly recommend it!

Contribute to More Books

Writing a book is no small feat and while I may have another in me, it’s also nice to be one of many contributors. I loved submitting photos for one this year and have already written two chapters for another book to be released in 2023. I’m also working on a proposal for a potential book.

Celebrate the Wins

This can be hard to do as it’s always time to go on to the next story or next project. But I would really like to do a better job of treating myself for a job well done. Sometimes the wins are small, like getting a compliment from an editor, while others, like landing a big-name outlet, are bigger.

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