Welcome back to my newsletter!
This letter finds me four and a half months shy of my planned publication date for Why Teach? in February. While my book isn’t in the style of Bridget Jones’s Diary, I’ve found Helen Fielding’s novel on my mind as I think about how to address my newsletter audience. In that spirit, I thought I’d offer the following account of my last month:
Cigarettes: 0
Units of alcohol: 0
Weight: 176 (roughly even)
Cups of tea: 26, or roughly one every day
New pages of fiction written: 0
Pages of Why Teach? reviewed and tightened: 99
Pages of short fiction reviewed and tightened: 54
Videos about teaching published on YouTube: 1
Short stories published on Substack: 1
Longform posts on Substack: 3
New subscribers and followers: 21 (!!!)
Good news for the month: I received feedback on my revisions from my developmental editor. She gave the novel an enthusiastic review and relatively clean bill of health!
Plans for the next month:
Post 1-2 videos about teaching on YouTube
Post 1 short story on Substack
Share one longform post—perhaps on October 5th
Post one “Newsletter”—we’ll shoot for the 20th
Engage constructively and enthusiastically with the literary and education communities with comments, likes, follows, and subscriptions
Query cover designers
Taking a small break from Why Teach?, revise ~60-80 pages of Komojo!
Work on revisions for my next month’s short story post
Be a good husband, father, and teacher while accomplishing all of the above
Writing it out, it seems like I have a lot ahead of me, but taking things a day at a time, I’m confident I can be successful.
Thanks for reading,
Peter