It’s the first day of an outstanding October. Are you ready for the month ahead? I am. I have some big plans for this month, and I can’t wait to get started on them.
Plus, I mean, it’s October. It’s such a great month all on its own, regardless of your goals. There’s the beautiful autumn colours, Halloween, and, here in Canada, Thanksgiving. There’s so much to love about October.
Before getting too far into what October promises, though, I want to take a quick minute to look back on what I accomplished (or didn’t) in September.
September’s goals
- Start revisions on CD
- Get at least one short story ready for submission
- Start querying BC
I made some pretty good progress on all three of those goals, and can even check off two of them as being complete. Though, to be fair, the two I can check off weren’t super difficult goals.
My CD revisions are going well so far. I have the new outline all straightened out, and I’m a fair way into the revisions. This manuscript is flowing really well for me. Each time I save and close the file, I can’t wait to get back to it again. That’s not only a good sign, it’s also a wonderful feeling.
I’ve also sent out some queries for BC. As I mentioned in September’s update, I’m not going to share too many details when it comes to my querying experience, so I won’t say too much more than that. What I will say is that I have a lot of hope that querying this manuscript will go well. I’ll make sure to keep you posted on any big news.
Finally, we come to the goal that I didn’t quite accomplish. I did get a lot of work done on a couple of my short stories, and there’s one that’s almost ready for submission. It isn’t quite there yet, though, so I’ll be carrying that goal over to October.
Speaking of which…
October’s goals
- Submit a short story for possible publication
- Get at least 20,000 words of CD revised
- Be more active on social media
- Publish one photo blog post per week
Yes, there are a couple of familiar goals in there, but I’m also mixing things up a little bit. Let’s break things down, starting with the familiar.
First, there’s the short story goal. That’s a carry-over from last month, and I’m going to focus on the story that’s almost ready. It already reads a lot stronger than it used to, so I’d like to send it off this month.
As for the CD goal, I figure 20,000 words should be achievable. I’m at somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 right now, so another 11,000 to 12,000 shouldn’t be too bad. Getting there would bring me to just under a quarter of a way through the novel, too, which seems like a pretty good target.
Now, those last two are newer targets for me. I’ve aimed for some more specific social media targets before, but I’ve purposefully made this one a little more vague. Mostly because I just want to be more active on most social media platforms. I’ve had a pretty good Twitter presence lately, but everything else could use some work.
The last one is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I’ve been slacking on the photography front lately, and I want to fix that. I found a couple of photo bucket lists/challenges on Pinterest (a fall one and a Christmas one), so, while I may not exactly follow them, I’m going to use them as inspiration for more frequent photo posts. Make sure you keep an eye out for them.
Well, I think that’s all I have to share today. So tell me, what do you have planned for October? And how did your September go?
Miranda Burski 
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