This month I’m finding it hard to recall what exactly happening. The last week resulted in my first overnight hospital stay with my two-year-old son who was having trouble breathing. While he’s fully recovered now, that unexpected event has overshadowed most other things.
Casting my mind back, I can manage to remember that we had a few good weeks where he an I were healthy. He was able to attend day care consistently and I got into a really good writing groove.
My focus was largely fiction this month, although I did brainstorm some opinion articles that I’m keen to dive into.
Freelance
Pitches sent: 1
LinkedIn connections made: 1
Commissions: 0
Projects completed: 0
Money made: $0
While I didn’t make much headway on the freelance front, I did dive in to one of the online courses I’d enrolled in before we moved. Opinion Writing with Bridie Jabour via Kill Your Darlings got the gears turning again and I’ve plenty of article ideas that just require a little research and formulation into pitches. Next month the plan is to get into a regular routine with pitching so I can built up my portfolio.
Fiction
Stories/words written: 3
Stories edited: 1
Stories submitted: 4
Stories published: 0
Money made: $0
I was in such a good writing zone this month. I wrote one rather long short story that came to me while holding my son while he slept in the early morning. I wrote two other pieces of flash fiction. One was I fun little romp inspired by portal narratives and pirates. The other was written as an exercise as part of a short story workshop by Mary Robinette Kowal.
I’m continuing to work on a children’s short story, which I’m very ready to be done with and start sending off. Hopefully two more passes will do the trick.
The stories I submitted are older stories that I found new potential markets for.
Discovering New Markets
Discovering new markets was actually a huge part of the writing work I did this month. Since I haven’t researched markets in years, there were plenty of exciting new avenues to discover, including Curiouser Magazine, Tales & Feathers Magazine and Baffling Magazine.
Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to hear more about, such as how I researech short story markets. I’d love to hear from you.