This review is significant because it marks six months of freelancing as a writer. The highlights for me have been:

  • Seeing my very first article in print in Devon Life Magazine.
  • Having my first article – a three pager – published in Bird Watching Magazine.
  • Having three guest blog posts accepted by Mark Avery, my blogging guru.
  • Getting a commission to deliver an online nature-writing workshop.
  • The really interesting and kind people I’ve interviewed who’ve offered support,
  • And the bottom line is I’ve made £650 from freelancing to date, with £575 of that in Nov. It’s not much but it’s start and I’ve got enough savings to last until the end of July 2021.
  • The quirkiest thing I’ve worked on is an animation script on the subject of tree communication for a web start up company. This is a commission I picked up from the UpWork freelancers’ website. The jury is still out on whether this is legit and I won’t know for sure until I get paid…

My November review against plan is as follows:

  • Write chapter 3 of book – After quite a lot of research this month I made the decision that each of the 12 chapters planned needed to be longer at around 5000 words long so I went back to the September chapter and expanded it from 3000 to 5000 words. I still need to do this with October and November but I’ve put time in my calendar in December to do this.
  • Submit proposal plus first 5000 words to an agency open submission event – Yes, I got this in by the due date and should find out tomorrow whether I’ve been successful in getting picked for the online pitching event. Even if I’m not, it now means my book proposal and writing plan are in much better shape.
  • Botany learning plan to support book writing: I’ve been testing myself against my plant family flashcards and I did some tree identification practice at Kew Gardens.
  • 1000 words of new nature writing, over and above my book chapter – Yes, easily done in mixture of blogs and articles.
  • 4 pitches (or competition entries) – yes, the two aspirational pitches weren’t accepted but my pitch for a guest blog post and a pitch for running an on-line workshop both were accepted.
  • 600 Twitter followers (up from 505) – Yup, up to a whopping 606 today.
  • 40 followers for this blog (up from 35) – Showing as 39 today.

My December plan is as follows:

  • Get chapters 2, 3 and 4 of my book into first draft form at approximately 5000 words each. Pitch book proposal to 3 further agents.
  • Botany learning plan to support book writing: Carry on testing on plant family flashcards, add in botany terminology flashcards and species photo flashcards
  • 1000 words of new nature writing, over and above my book chapters. 
  • 4 pitches (or competition entries) two achievable, two aspirational
  • 700 Twitter followers (up from 606)
  • 45 followers for this blog (up from 39)