I’m learning my friends. Last month I talked about over-committing, submitting my musical, work, and family commitments that were weighing me down, and all the grand plans I wasn’t getting to.
So, for November, I decided to make no commitments at all.
(Of course, some of them are ongoing–the Christmas show and concert, kid things, Christmas in general. We’re hosting Thanksgiving again this year after me boycotting doing so last year, but I’m not going to stress about it. If people don’t like how I run it, they can go elsewhere, or they can host it themselves.)
What I DID do was set a time goal. 45 minutes a day on something writing related. Literally anything counts. Outlining? Counts. Research? Counts. Watching marketing videos that I’ve had open for six months? Counts. Drawing potential children’s book characters? Counts.
I made a list of things it would be nice to get down or make progress on, and off we went.
And it is working so well. It’s brilliant. It’s the 13th, I’ve done a little over 9.5 hours of my 22.5 goal, and I have:
- Updated all my metadata after the CreateSpace/KDP move
- Finished my anthology story (super excited about the antho!) and edited/revised it
- Revised a short story
- Wrote my serial story section for the month (and outlined to The End, a few thousand words off)
- Looked over the status of the nonfiction series I’ve been working on for three years and outlined the final book (which I am going to start writing after I finish this post and make a phone call)
- Found markets and sent out short stories (2)
- Done a brainstorming session with Siri for the Sekrit Project Part II
- Learned how to use Photoshop and colored some line art of potential characters (and learned how to shade!)
As seen here:
- Watched several marketing videos I’ve just had sitting open for months (on the last one!)
All these little things that have just been building up! And now they’re getting done!
It’s a freaking miracle.
It’s been forever since I’ve felt so productive. I’m not sure what it is, but I think it’s the combo of having a long list of little projects with the time goal. It’s not “write for an hour on this specific process” so there’s more freedom. And I can switch things as I feel like it (like, I had been planning on doing some outlining yesterday, but did the videos instead), though I am trying to finish a project before I move on to the next one.
Whatever it is, it’s working. Fingers crossed that it stays working for the rest of the month (and dare I say, after?).
How’s your November going?