I worked with a student this week who told me that she had half a dozen or so writing projects she wanted to get done in 2022.
Half a dozen major writing projects. All novels.
Okay, I said. Okay. Let’s see if we can’t figure out what that would actually look like.
Because you can make any kind of goal you want. Something simple. Something complex. And it’s just words until you figure out how you’re actually going to accomplish it.
I walked her through making a plan, with an eye toward helping her to see a path from here to the end of next year that includes reaching her ambitious writing goals.
I thought you might be interested in seeing how that works.
You’re going to need a notebook and a calendar.
This is an exercise in seeing what’s actually possible. Could she actually write her half a dozen books in a year? Not — is it a good idea? Not — should she? Just, is it possible?
There are six steps here and the first five should be done with a little bit of a remove. Don’t worry about how you’re going to find the time or if you’re going to actually enjoy life if you commit to this much work.
That’s the job of step six.
This is a pre-step. Something that’s not really part of figuring out your writing calendar, but kind of necessary because you probably have other obligations and you can’t be two places at once.
So, sit down with your calendar for a few minutes and just fill in the things you know you have to do. Things like your work schedule, any appointments, your kids sports schedule, holidays or birthdays, classes you’re taking. Whatever.
This is your baseline. It’s the slalom course your writing has to navigate to actually get done.
No judgement. No priorities. Just make a list in your notebook of all of your projects. Leave a few lines for taking notes between each one.
Depending on your personality, this might either look like a massive list of an entire lifetime’s worth of writing projects, or an anemic list of one or two small projects that you’re ‘sure’ you can reach.
Don’t worry about overlisting.
If you’re underlisting, just challenge yourself to put the projects that scare you a little bit down. You’re not committing to doing anything. Just taking a look at what you’ve got going on in the idea department.
In other words, these are the projects you have in any state of development and they might represent a lifetime of work. My student had half a dozen she wanted to get done in 2022. Someone else might have a half a dozen they want to get done in the next decade or two.
Under each project on your list, note your progress. Where are you on each particular project?
I like to use four different designations when I’m categorizing my projects: Brewing, Plotting, Writing, and Editing.
If you’re brewing a project, it’s in the idea phase and you haven’t done anything toward preparing to write it yet.
If you’re plotting, you’ve started to plan your book. Or maybe it’s fully plotted, but you haven’t started writing yet.
If you’re writing something, you’re somewhere through the first draft. Or you’ve written the first draft, but you haven’t started to revise. Write done your work count.
And if you’re editing something, you’ve finished a draft and you’re working on revising it.
Easy enough. Now you have a list of all ongoing and upcoming projects, with their status.
Look at your list and decide which project matters the most to you. Label that project #1. Then label the next most important project #2. And so on.
You might put a higher priority on the project that’s closest to completion. Or to one that has an extenuating outside deadline — perhaps a publisher or editor is waiting on your revision. Maybe you’re trying to finish in time to submit your idea to a contest or some other call for submissions.
Maybe one project is just tugging at you more than the others. That’s okay, too. Even if that project isn’t the one that’s closest to being done.
Here’s the thing though. You’re in the process of actually making a real schedule for your writing for the next year. That means that what you choose as a top priority should actually stay that way until you’ve moved it through brewing, plotting, writing, editing.
The point of prioritizing your projects is to help you actually stick with one until it’s finished. There’s not much that all successful writers have in common. We come in all shapes and sizes. But there is this one thing: we all have to have finished manuscripts.
