My June plan was as follows:

  • 2000 words of new nature writing: Happily, this objective was easy. I wrote a couple of 370 length articles and 30 different pieces about nature spaces I visited in June which ranged from 100 words to 350 words. I also wrote a 500 word nature memoir piece for a competition entry.
  • Four pitches to realistic outlets (ones that are more likely to accept new writers) and one aspirational pitch (where success is less likely but nothing ventured blah blah…): I pitched to three likely outlets and two of those were accepted. And it just worked out that I also pitched to two aspirational outlets, with the aim of trying to get a response, and did get feedback from one of them.
  • One worked up book idea: I put quite a lot of time into thinking about this one and have worked up an idea which would keep me a busy doing the research for at least a year. I’m still doing some work on the chapter summaries and have found a couple of fantastic and very kind published authors who’ve agreed to give me comments on it over the next couple of weeks.
  • 20 followers each for this blog (from 0): I’m frankly amazed that 26 people are now following this blog, and I’m grateful to you all for your interest!
  • 20 followers for my nature writing blog (from 0): It’s been harder to increase followers for the blog where my nature writing is published, and it was only 9 as of today.
  • 100 followers on Twitter (from almost none): It’s up to 90 as I write this so pretty close to my objective for this month. I’m going to have a final June push today to see if I can get it over the line by midnight. [It was 101 by first thing 1 Jul]
  • 100 followers on Instagram (from not many): Yeh, 101 followers (although it was 102 yesterday and I find myself obsessing about what I did to piss someone off!)

My July plan is:

  • 2000 words of new nature writing
  • Four pitches to realistic outlets (ones that are more likely to accept new writers and/or are unpaid) and at least one aspirational pitch
  • My first book idea fully worked up and plans in place for when to pitch the proposal and to enable me to deliver it
  • A second book idea in draft form
  • 40 followers each for this blog and my nature writing blog and 200 followers each for Instagram and Twitter. I need to research what’s the best way to do this.