Month-in-Review Highlights: September 2023

Me on my lunch break as a volunteer for Le Livre sur les Quais, a literary festival in Morges, Switzerland. September 1, 2023.

I postmortem each month shortly after it ends. Previously, I used these posts to hold myself accountable on progress toward my annual goals. Starting in January 2023, I broadened these posts to address more generally my observations and experiences for the month. (To read previous months’ reviews, click here.)

In preparing for these monthly notes, I look back through the photos I took during the month to grab one to head up the article. In doing so, I unfailingly discover moments I’d already forgotten and get a chance to revisit them, even if the photo doesn’t make the “cut” for this site.

In looking back through my snapshots of September, as with every month I can remember for a long time now, I couldn’t believe how much had happened.

I started the month with three consecutive days volunteering full-time (and all in French) at a literary festival in Morges, a town near Lausanne, called Le livre sur les quais. I had the good fortune of an assignment to greet authors and editors as they arrived, give them their packets and badges, and get them oriented for their festival appearance, which meant meeting and greeting some names I knew (including ones with books I’ve read) and some I didn’t know (and whose books I’ve since looked up as possible reads). On my goals list for the year, I had attending a literary festival and challenging my French-language skills a bit more by pushing outside my comfort zone, and this experience covered both of those bases well.

On the writing front, I spent time in September revisiting the query package for my first novel from top of bottom based on some additional feedback I requested from experienced people. This means my outreach to agents for representation is on ice until I get the revisions done, but I hope I’ll get better results when I do get back to it, even if it means waiting until next year. (The holidays are almost upon us, after all. No one really works during the holidays, especially on nonurgent new initiatives—not even hardworking literary agents.)

I kept up the hard work on my second novel as well. At the tail end of the month, I managed to finish my latest layer of drafting on what will be a finished first draft by year-end. I should have only one more layer to go to call the first draft a wrap, based on my assessment of this latest layer. I feel good to feel progress and I feel good that I should hit my goal of having the first draft finished by the end of 2023.

In addition, I spent a couple of days in Rome to meet up with my dad and his wife before they started a Mediterranean cruise. It was great to see them and to get them further set up for their travel adventure. They haven’t had one in a long time.

I capped off the month by venturing into a new-to-me yoga studio in my area for in-person classes that I can add to my home practice. I’ve now tried a couple of their offerings and attended a special workshop they held on transition techniques, which was fun.

With the yoga forays, I’m certainly aiming to improve my practice, though I’m also trying to meet people in the area with similar interests—an ongoing challenge in a new place (and especially in a new language). Toward this end, I joined a few other activity groups in September to see what’s fun and have continued my efforts to build a writing community in the Lausanne area. Here’s to hoping all this persistence achieves something.

Although we’ve had a few weeks of glorious weather in Lausanne to round out the month and kick off October, I can feel the quietude of autumn seeping in with shorter days, amber trees, leaves on the sidewalks, and a seasonal turning inward. Come November, I’ll have settled into full-cozy mode, I imagine, wanting nothing more than blankets and tea and books and a warm, snug spot.