My review against plan for January to March 2022 is as follows:

  • Books – The plan had been to finish drafting the first half of book two but I was delighted to be taken on in January by a fab literary agent, Tom Drake-Lee at the DHH literary agency, on the basis of my first book proposal. So at that point I had to have a rethink about planning. I’ve spent the quarter editing the first book and much of the material I’d collected for the second book idea has made its way into it.
  • Articles – I pitched nine ideas over the quarter – two were accepted, six were “maybe, to be decided” and final one was a “no thanks, because it was too close to a feature the magazine had published two years before.
  • Writing residency – In the last three months of my nature-writing residency in the Great North Wood, I:
    • delivered an online reading event;
    • co-hosted my final funded online nature-writing workshop;
    • produced a Thumbnail Nature activity journal for self-publishing and sent it off to the printers,
    • delivered an in person nature-writing workshop for London Wildlife Trust’s Keeping It Wild trainees.
  • Regulars – blogging and newsletters I collated nature-writing newsletters for January, February and March as planned and blogged six times on my nature-writing blog.
  • Learning – I worked on learning plants id and bird calls.

My plan for April to June 2022 is as follows:

  • Books – finish editing the 21 chapters of my first book.
  • Articles – deliver commissioned articles, pitch 4 further features.
  • Workshops – launch online series of workshops
  • Regulars – blog nature writing regularly and collate monthly nature-writing news
  • Nature learning & activities – take part in eel monitoring with South East Rivers Trust, volunteer at the South London Botanical Institute and with the London Wildlife Trust, lead pavement plant walks and get better at Latin plant names for local plants.