I Failed To Achieve 4 Of My 6 Goals For The September Writing Challenge
And I still have reasons to celebrate
October 1st marks the end of my September writing challenge. It’s been a crazy month, and I didn’t achieve all of the goals I set for myself.
However, I am proud to say that I have achieved one of my main goals: to write consistently. Here are the details:
My Goals For The September Writing Challenge
In my pledge post for the 30-day writing challenge, I set the following process goals:
- write every day
- submit one piece of writing/day to a Medium publication
- read 2–5 articles/day
And I set the following outcome goals:
- have 25 or more articles published by the end of the challenge
- have 10 new poems (or more) published by the end of the challenge
- increase follower counts and earnings
What Are The Results?
To cut a long story short: I didn’t write every day, I didn’t submit every day, and I didn’t publish 10 (or more) new poems. I also only published 23 stories, instead of 25.
The biggest mistake I made was probably not sticking to the writing schedule I laid out in the beginning. The inability to stick to my self-selected plans has been an issue for me in the past, and I definitely need to work on this.
I mean, how hard can it be? In school, we already do tasks according to a schedule. But I digress…
Despite not sticking to writing first thing in the morning, I managed to write on most days.
In September, I published 23 stories, including the pledge post and poems. After a five-month break from Medium, I published 17 articles in August and wanted to keep the momentum going.
In the process, I increased my views, reads, and fans from July to September:
July 2021: 211 views, 85 reads, 6 fans
September 2021: 2412 views, 1143 reads, 237 fans
My followers grew as well: I gained 164 new followers in August and in September 191. That means my follower count grew from 1,209 in July to 1,564 in September.
My income increased from $1.13 in July to $75.98 in September.
To put these numbers into perspective: I joined Medium in December 2019 and published my first 9 stories in February 2020. Then I tapered off and posted only sporadically:
- February 2020: 9 stories
- March 2020: 8 stories
- April 2020: 2 stories
- Mai — October 2020: 0 stories
- November 2020: 1 story
- December 2020: 1 story
- January 2021: 2 stories
- February 2021: 1 story
- March — July 2021: 0 stories
My highest earning month before August 2021 was March 2020, where I made $18.12. When I didn’t publish myself, I was also relatively inactive. That means no reading, clapping, or commenting on other writer’s stories (I apologize).
How Did The Poetry Writing Go?
While I didn’t finish 10 poems, I wrote and submitted 8, all of which were accepted in the respective publications.
Through Galit Birk, PhD’s Haiku writing prompt, I discovered haiku writing and played with this form almost exclusively in September.
Writing poetry is something that feeds my soul, but I tend to push it aside because “it is not important.” I am delighted to immerse myself in poetry writing much more again since starting the September writing challenge.
Did I Read, Clap And Comment?
I am happy to report that I am much more active on Medium again, love connecting with old friends, and discovered a few new writers whose work I love.
I didn’t comment as much as I have planned, but I left some rather lengthy, thoughtful comments on a few posts, and I clap as much as I can to support fellow writers.
What Did I Learn?
I learned that I need to make it a habit to stick to a writing schedule. Either this or to learn to create better schedules for me😅 .
Besides, I have to take a closer look at the framework conditions before setting goals for such challenges.
September was a busy month for me — doctors appointments, tax declaration to be prepared, preparing for, and racing a 50 K ultra-marathon race (where I placed 3rd overall 🤘). And on top of that, my day job also got busier in September.
While I couldn’t influence the latter much, I knew my other obligations beforehand and should have known that I set the bar for this writing challenge way too high.
Nevertheless, I am happy with the results, and they encourage me to continue and improve in October. I will try to publish something every day to get over my fear of putting my work out there for the world to see and discipline myself to write. I am happy to report that I already achieved this goal for today by writing and submitting this wrap-up plus a new haiku.
I am glad to be a part of Medium’s writing community again and looking forward to new challenges and reasons to celebrate.
