Last month I wrote about what my writing projects were going to be during May. I never really thought about doing this again for the month of June but it was fairly successful and I learned from it so I'm going to go ahead and chat about what worked last month and what I'm going to work on this month.
So, as a quick recap, I've come to the conclusion that the best way for me to work is to divide the month up into projects. Not to have deadlines or to get so many words written in a day. But to say, this month I'm working on 'x'.
Last month my two main goals were
1. to increase the amount of blog posts I write
2. to work on my novel.
I achieved both. But maybe not quite as productively as I'd hoped.
Increasing my blog posts
Let's look at the blog posts. My aim was to increase the amount I wrote, to plan more and to see if this had an impact on my stats.
In my head this worked better than in reality.
See, in my head I thought I'd produced a bog post every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. But actually, looking back, this wasn't the case. (I'm still confused by this!) I wrote twice a week for the first three weeks (with an extra one in there making seven blog posts in total) then wrote nothing from Wednesday 16th until Friday 25th when I was under the weather. Then I wrote one on the 26th then nothing until this one today.
So, in actual fact my number of blog posts decreased in May from April by one.
For a week during the end of May I wasn't 'match fit'. So nothing was being published. Then the following week was half-term which made it harder to write. This only serves to remind me that it's important I write blog posts so I can schedule them in advance. If I am a little under the weather or it is school holidays I can still produce regular writing.
This is an important discipline for me to learn. And it's also to do with my mind-set. I want writing to be my job - my career - therefore I must treat it as such.
So for the month of June I am aiming for two posts a week. Plus I want to start building up a backlog of posts to schedule for July - especially as I take the the second half of July and beginning of August off.
Writing my novel
At the beginning of May I had edited chapter one of my novel in progress. My novel is about 50% written so there is an element of editing the first half and brand new writing of the second half.
By today I am on chapter three with chapter four roughly done (I've made myself go back and re-edit a scene that I tend to skip through as it is hard for me to read). So it's not massive progress but it is progress.
First thing in the morning whilst drinking my first coffee of the day my aim is to work on it for about 45 minutes.
So that's my two big goals for June.
Additional work:
To write an e-course with Sarah Newton to go with Bookish Photography.
My Sowing Stories newsletter (this month it's going to be about 'rules') to go out later this week.
- My A Bookish Baker newsletter to go out at the end of June.
- Client work
- Research memoir/non-fiction (a post to come on this soon)
- Research Patreon
- Send out the final lesson of my Sowing Stories e-course for the current batch of students.
- Instagram photographs
- Any sponsored Instagram work that comes in via Takumi.
The big lesson I've learned this month is that even though I plan to only work on x or y there is always a z. In fact, there are lots of z's that pop up and demand my attention. To be more productive I need to incorporate these z's into my daily, weekly and monthly workload and not to forget about them and to brush them under the carpet.
So, if I want to get more work done I have to structure my day a little more.
In my notebook I have a page of what I'd like to write and work on this month. Then I break down my days so I can work towards this monthly goal.
So, my third goal for June is:
To be more productive, to set daily, weekly and monthly tasks and to show up and do the actual work.
I will report back at the beginning of July.
