[crapgadget tv commercial voice]
”Inspiration hits. You really like this idea! But who has the time to take on yet another personal project?”
[/crapgadget tv commercial voice]
It can be hard to actually get to work and move a project from ‘start’ to ‘done’, even when you’re motivated (more or less motivated) to tackle your growing list of ideas, because you have no idea where to start or what to focus on. It can be hard, too, to know when to call something done so you can cross it off the list and move on to something else. (We can fix and fiddle and add to things seemingly forever, never really getting done.)
At least, it has proven very difficult for me to actually follow through on ideas (ymmv) and I think the popularity of things like NaNoWriMo and Inktober show that for a lot a folks, an extra nudge (and the “let’s all do this together” community aspect) is just what they needed to actually get over that hump. This suggestion isn’t going to be a runaway success like either of those: there is no theme, it’s going to take all year and not just a month, and odds are, you’re not going to like it.
That’s the point of deadlines though. Nobody likes a deadline. This is also why deadlines work: you have a drop dead date and you have to just get done with the thing (or 90% done with the thing) and turn it in.
We all know this, but we never — “we” in this case being me, and possibly some of you — we never set deadlines for our personal projects or back-burner stuff, the stuff we promise we’ll get to, “someday”.
Since it is going to take some sort of outside force to move all these projects along: I’ll do it. I’ll be the bad guy. Not a nudge but a shove. I’m taking a running start and ‘bout to knock you over a cliff of productivity into 2020.
_You_ will have to figure out which 13 projects1 you’re going to tackle in 2020 but I get to be the evil editor or boss or demanding client who is going to give you a deadline. 13 of them in fact.
There is a neat coincidence about how the numbers line up between the orbit we call a ‘year’ and the rotation of this dumb rock that we call a ‘day’ and the odd-when-you-stop-and-think-about-it habit of dividing days into batches of 7: Thirteen 4-week chunks that we more commonly call months.2
Smaller projects could be paired or batched. Clean up the garage, and then build shelves & a bench, for example. Or organize all of last year’s receipts and then do your taxes and then set up a system to actually keep the paperwork organized going forward. Or just do the “one big weekend” job that is actually going to take you two weekends (it’s true and you know it) and then you have a 3rd weekend to clean up after (you know it’ll take the 3rd weekend too) and have a week off before the due date. Something that would actually take 4 whole weeks might take some planning; making the plan & doing the prep & buying the stuff could be a whole ‘nother prior project with its own due date. Heck, with the planning and prepping and going (and resting after) even a week’s vacation could be considered a “project”.3
Learn a skill. Build a shed. Iterate 8 times on a recipe idea. Pick any of the half dozen things you’ve been putting off for “someday when [you] have the time”
4 weeks is a block of time.
And we’ve got 13 chunks like that in 2020.
Here are your Due Dates for the 2020 Assignments:
30 January
27 February
26 March
23 April
21 May
18 June
16 July
13 August
10 September
8 October
5 November
3 December
31 December
Due dates are Thursdays because I want you to wrap-up what you’re doing, call it done (or done enough) and file it — and then go enjoy at least one weekend off out of four.4 We’ve already lost one week5 so your first assignment is going to be rushed and I know I popped this on you late but I have two suggestions to help cover that
.Option 1. you could use January to brainstorm (or resurrect) the 12 other really good ideas you’d like to get done this year. Your first project is find 12 projects for 2020, due 30 Jan. Should be easily do-able in three weeks. You’ll probably have time to revise your list four or five times and maybe do some prep work or shopping for the first one.
~or~
.Option B. take the three weeks now to break down that One Really Big Project into 12 more manageable, achievable chunks.
For example6, if the really big project is to “finally write that book” the 12 chunks might be:
.1. Read 20 books in the same field/genre
.2. Read 20 more books in the same field/genre
.3. Outline and structure – plot and setting for fiction, scope and focus for non-fiction7
.4. Read 20 more books in the same field/genre
.5. OK now think about what works and doesn’t in the 5 dozen books you’ve read this year. Yes, I expect this to take 4 weeks.
.6. Revisit the outline. Revise the outline. If you have nothing to revise I think you did Assignment 5 wrong, but anyway, skip the first two chapters and write starting from chapter three.
.7. Are you three weeks into writing the middle of your book? Good. Now stop that.8 Go back to your outline and the beginning and write the first chapter. Revise the outline, because you probably have some different ideas now than where you were at four weeks ago.
.8. Write 10,000 words
.9. Write 10,000 words
.10. Write 10,000 words
.11. You should be around a fifth or a third or halfway through your outline, well, some way through the original outline: it has probably ballooned since and you’re thinking this is going to be more than one book? Maybe a trilogy? How do professional authors do this? Anyway, Stop. It’s the 6th of November and you’re already behind on NaNoWriMo; I’m gonna need 50,000 words out of you on a completely different book by 30 November. No, don’t outline, that’s not what NaNoWriMo is about. Vomit words into a file. Go go go go you’re already late but 6 November is a Friday, you have all weekend to play catch-up. (Hopefully the habit of writing 500-ish words a day for the past 12 weeks primed you for this.) The “2020 Assignment” deadline is 3 December but go ahead and hit that NaNo goal line on 30 November (or don’t, no shame, it happens some–or most–years) and then take a break. Take the weekend, take a week. Take two, why not, get some end-of-the-year holiday madness taken care of. But there’s still one more assignment before January:
.12. Revisit your outline. Read the 30,000 or so words you wrote before November. Go back and re-write your first chapter. Go back and re-write the opening line — spend a couple of days or a week on just that, why not.
See? Easy.
You still won’t have written a book in 2020 but now we have a plan! .9
And due dates. Your first assignment is due in three weeks.
1 Ooooo… 13! Spooky and unlucky and bad. See, this is going to work out great.
2 Except months are longer than 4 weeks and we have 12. And the leftover day (or two) each year. And why isn’t this standardized yet? Inertia? Anyway the calendar sucks but days are days and weeks have seven of ‘em and 4 weeks is probably enough time to tackle a project-of-appropriate-small-epic-scale. Also the Earth’s natural satellite might have influenced why we think of 28 or 29 or 29-and-half days as being somehow significant but hell, I ain’t no astronomer, and it still doesn’t explain Juli’s *or* Greg’s calendar.
3 Anything over a week or that requires a passport might take up two.
4 Also because the very last day of the year happens to be a Thursday.
5 My bad. Though to be fair I had the idea of “due dates” for 2020 last week and I just didn’t get around to writing it up until today. I’m kind of bad about getting around to finishing things. If only I could mitigate or even correct that by having some sort of external, set deadl… oh. right.
6 This sample project breakdown is a kind-of-on-topic digression that really could and probably should be its own post but that’s not the way I write or think so… here, have it. If you end up reading a lot of my blog output you might notice that these digressions are ‘a thing’ and damnably, I’m good at them (the digression part; the writing has to stand on its own for you to judge as good or not). I’m not saying you have to write a book in 2020 or that my 12 steps are the way to write a book but if you wanted to follow it I think it would “work” in as much as I admit that if followed, to the letter and as outlined, it’s not actually going to work.
7 I call it an “outline” here and throughout but “outline” might have some sort of meaning for you that differs from mine so I’ll stress that a book “outline” could be a lot of things and not all of them are formal or heavy or hard to do. You could be starting with just the story seed and a lot of background notes and half an idea for an ending but not an “outline”. That’s great; take the 4 weeks and think it over and write that down – Or 10k words in a bare-bones we’ll-flesh-the-scenes-out-later super-early not-even-first-draft-let’s-call-it-the-zero draft – Or just a list of all the clues you want to put into the mystery and the killer twist at the end – Or the history of the place you’re about to use as your setting. You might take these 4 weeks to think about your main character and supporting cast and their enemies and do rpg character sheets and backstory for each instead of developing a scene-by-scene outline of the story. It doesn’t have to be a single document, either; you could (and maybe should) use Scrivener or a mini-wiki or an index card deck or a mind map or the random notes text file in Notepad on your laptop or whatever pre-writing structure you find most useful. You might be ready to just dive in and discover your characters and pants the plot on the fly while you write, which is also valid, and so your assignment for 23 April is to just write (but take the break after 4 weeks to go read some more in your genre). Or whatever completely sensible thing you want to do (or end up doing) as part of your process that makes your process different from mine, and better. And this is a lot of really good content, down here in an end note, that quite honestly should be featured in its own post and I must be nuts why do I keep doing this.
8 Before the edit this sentence was, “Now stop that nonsense.”
9 A plan with potentially 80,000 words at the end of it, though not all one book and potentially not related – but past that and on top of 80K words: an outline & banger first chapter to take with you into 2021.