It’s a real cliche but October went by fast. It was the month of my birthday, the month where the early morning starts with the puppy started to take their toll and the month of half term.
Which is my way of leading up to the fact that October didn’t go as well for me as I’d hoped on the writing front. I suppose this is unsurprising when I think of everything I achieved in September. You cannot keep going at full throttle; at some point you have to slow down and sort the house, spend time with your family and clean out the chicken coops!
You can find out how I got on last month in My Writing Month of September.
However, despite me not feeling like the essay and novel-writing went particularly well the good news is the hard work on my blog is reaping rewards. In the last two months I have significantly increased the unique visitors, visits and page views on my blog. And in October all three have doubled since January 2018.
Week Five
The month didn’t start to well as although I felt inspired I had a cold and felt a bit like I’d run out of petrol. A lesson learned there. For the first time in four weeks I’d run out of ideas for blog posts. And lacked enthusiasm for the ideas I had in my notebook.
I still planned to write three blog posts a week but made the decision not to write two newsletters a month but just the one.
This week I also had a sponsored Instagram post for Amazon Publishing and took this in front of the woodburner. It was approved to go live but when it did the engagement was not as good as my normal posts.
This week I also recorded a podcast interview (I’ll link once it goes live) and attempted to get to grips with Final Cut Pro to edit my videos instead of iMovie.
Essay writing continued with short burst of twenty minutes as I tried to get over my fears and hangups about it. But, spoiler alert, these fears and hangups continued throughout the month.
All in all this week wasn’t a good one. I debated with myself whether to include this in my Weekly Writing Vlog and in the end decided it was only honest to include. (Even if I did get a rude comment about it on my IGTV channel.)
Week Five of the Weekly Writing Vlog is here.
Week Six
I’m hurrying past week five because quite frankly I did not enjoy that week and just want to forget about it now. Week six has started more positively. I sent out my A Bookish Baker Monthly Newsletter and thoroughly enjoyed writing it. It took me a long time to put together though and I was typing away for some time; my cheeks growing pinker and pinker with the effort.
There was a bit of a Patreon disaster as I thought I’d charged patrons for sending them a regular patron-only blog post. Thankfully I’d just got the settings on the site set wrongly and I managed to change it. What surprised me was that I actually had patrons. I didn’t think I would for a good few months so this has delighted me very much. It has also made me a little fearful, however, with my essay and it’s not spilling out of me as I’d hoped.
I wrote the blog post, how to write when life is busy, this week, based on the success of my blog stats, the way my notebook planning was working and managing to accomplish lots of work despite having a new puppy. This then went on to inspire my first YouTube video towards the end of October.
Week Six of the Weekly Writing Vlog is here.
Week Seven
The first thing I did this week was to change my weekly vlog slightly. I added music, I added more shots that weren’t just of me talking to camera and I used the ability on Final Cut Pro to add footage of my blog posts as a rectangle within the main frame. But I’m still frustrated with the limitations of filming vertically for IGTV. I filmed my introduction to my YouTube channel and also adapted the IGTV vlogs for YouTube too (and is why I bought Final Cut Pro in the first place.)
With my writing I got confused with my essay and what it was I was trying to say. I didn’t touch the essay after that until a couple of days ago. I need a better system at working on it. Again, as before like my novel over the years, the longer projects are being pushed back for the more immediate ones. (And both the longer and shorter projects are important in my business plan).
Week Seven of the Weekly Writing Vlog is here.
Week Eight
No vlog this week, little writing too as it is half term but I am still writing my three blog posts a week even if I have to sit and write them in the evenings when the family is watching the TV. I made a decision this week, too. I’ve decided to discontinue my Weekly Writing Vlog in the vertical format and to create it in the horizontal. So it’ll now go straight to YouTube rather than IGTV.
I did my first YouTube video this week all about my planning and it did well (for me!) I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process so this has given me the courage to just go for it with YouTube and to stop hiding out on IGTV.
I will summarise the ninth week in my November Writing Month blog post but this week I have recorded and uploaded another video for my YouTube channel which involved me talking to camera. I was stilted and it took many attempts until I was vaguely happy. I have to remind myself that ‘practice makes perfect’.
Summary
So that is pretty much it for October. I’ve continued with three blog posts a week, one newsletter a month, and a vlog (almost) every Sunday. Now I’ve got these cornerstones into my regular writing routine I really want to get into my novel and my essay during the month of November. I want to work out why I leave it for days at a time. That fear is still there. I’m therefore going to break up my bigger projects into smaller more manageable tasks. To see if this makes it easier to get past that fear. Watch out for a YouTube video on that soon!
