how I prepare for blogtober

The fruit trees in our orchard are covered in blossoms, the air is heavy with the scent of wattle, the recycling bin overfloweth with boxes and the fridge is full of birthday cake…spring is here, September draws to a close, and on the horizon looms

Blogtober

While it has now been a decade since the official Blogtoberfest was a thing, October is still a month where bloggers crawl out of their writers block and into their edit box, and share a post every single day. 31 posts, 31 days. It’s giving old school blogging, and I love it. My Feedly explodes with posts, threads is buzzing with bloggy chatter, and I find myself making and writing so much more.

On the flip side, it’s A LOT. Not only is there thirty one posts minimum going out from the blog, but as a craft blogger, I need to have projects and progress to fuel those posts. I have other channels to keep up with; over Blogtober I send my newsletter weekly, I try and publish a Substack essay once a fortnight, and post a YouTube video once a fortnight. There’s also instagram. In 2022, my tally was 32 posts here, 10 posts for the podcast, four podcast episodes recorded, edited and uploaded, plus a social media tally of 32 instagram grid posts, two reels and 166 stories over two instagram accounts. 2023 &2024 both years I completed the full month, along with two Substacks in 2023, and in 2024, four each on Substack and Youtube. That’s not considering my instagram either!

from the archives – making the most of Blogtober as a reader and as a blogger

The only way to survive it, is to be prepared, and have a plan in place. I am normally starting to think about Blogtober from early September if not before. The first few days are easy; I have posts that I share most months, so I slot them into my calendar first. Book reviews, and my trolley update and plan for the month ahead, and then being just after the end of the quarter, I can also add in a yearly goal update. Day one is always just a bit of chatter about the project, and if I have anything else planned for a project over the month. There’s four days planned straight up.

a peek at my editorial calendar as it stands at the start of writing this post. I blog using WordPress.org, and the calendar is part of the Jetpack plug-in

Once I have those in, I’m starting to feel productive, and start sketching out some other posts. Another easy one is WIP Wednesday, so I run down each Wednesday and mark in a post with that as the title, and add a subtitle if I know there is a big project I can give an update on. Alliteration is one of my favourite way to easily generate ideas for posts, and I roughly mark my weeks out as Monday Musings, Tip Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, Three Things On Thursday, Finish Friday (or flash fiction Friday). Weekends tend to be a wildcard, though over October I do try and include a stash Saturday post, and Sunday Snippets is always a simple framework if I’m running low on updates.

I am not firmly stuck to these themes. If I have a finish on Tuesday, I’ll share it. If I have a new project on a Friday, up it goes. It’s more for when I am stuck for ideas, it gives me a starting place. Monday night and no idea what the next day’s post will be? What’s something I’ve learned or tried recently I could share? 9am Thursday and the blank page is mocking me? Here’s three things that are connected in some way. I also have a list of drafts (which are more accurately ideas noted as a title and then left to languish), which live over on the right hand side of this calendar page. If I’m stuck, I can run down the list and pick an idea to flesh out. The key is to make it easy as possible to get a post written and published at 10am every day.

So I’ve gotten days one to four, and the Wednesdays sorted. What next? I then scroll up, and see what posts I’ve added to the calendar over the past month or so that I never got around to writing. Those are easy to drop and drag down into October. Am I planning a monthly project? Let’s pop a couple of update posts in. The calendar is filling up nicely, so I’ll pop over to my phone’s camera roll, and scroll a bit. What have I been working on that hasn’t made the blog? Let’s add a post for that. With all these tricks, I’ve got just 8 days still blank. That feels like a good balance to me, as it gives me space to start and finish new things, create posts on the fly, and not be locked into what September Me thought would be interesting to write about. It also gives me enough structure so I don’t feel like I’m flailing every day all month to come up with ideas, and gives me space to actually create, to work on the projects that are the foundation of this blog.

I’m super excited to be jumping into blogtober yet again, it is always a hugely inspiring month, and one that brings me back to what I love most about blogging.

Are you joining the fun this year? Be sure to leave a comment below so I can add you to my Feedly and follow along!