I’m sitting in the Couth Buzzard Coffee Shop and Book Store in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle. It’s a shaggy, slightly worn place, lined with shelves of paperback science fiction, fantasy, and mystery novels.
When Seattle had it’s Samual Becket festival, the Buzzard hosted the only all-original work open mic at the festival. Our family attended to cheer on some of our songwriter friends who performed their own purpose-made Becket pieces, some amusing, some serious.
This is a good place. The walls are stuffed with unusual and surprising books. Half the shop’s back room is taken up by a mixed group of retirees and younger folks practicing conversational Spanish. The other half is taken up by me. Also, the Couth Buzzard is for sale.
But I’m not here to write about coffee shops. I’m here to write about how December went wrong.
What didn’t go wrong with December
My last Substack post before this one was on December 5th. Honestly, I hadn’t expected to get anything much written past December 15h. The holidays are always a bad time for planning anything. If you’ve got the option, you should always put food, family, and fun first. But I did hope to get one more article out before Christmas fell across the world like a giant time-consuming blanket.
And on Isotope? I wrote a total of 850 words. But… they were very important words! In a powered-by-the-apocalypse game, basic moves carry about 10x their weight compared with any other pat of the game text. So, by that measure, I wrote about 8500 words!
No, I’m disappointed by my progress in December, but not based on what I wrote. Rather, my issue with December was divided focus.
What did go wrong with December.
The problem with December was the Coloring Book. Oh, that damned coloring book. It’s a great idea—on paper. But, it doesn’t seem to be the best idea for me. I set out to complete the coloring book in December. I didn’t even get particularly close.
The coloring book, which is such a great idea, keeps turning into what I call a psychic energy sink. It’s a project I really, really feel like I should get this one done. I feel like there are a bunch of people watching me, waiting for it to be done. But when I try to move it forward, I find I don’t have the right time, tools, and leverage to make it happen.
So, the coloring book has been moved back to the slow track. I do have one bit of good news; I have passed it off to a proofreader to give the copy a final review. At least this way I know the project is moving.
I apologize to all of you who are excited about this one, especially the ones who contributed. I will land one day, I promise, and I won’t let it land until I think it looks great.
What did learn?
But, I did learn something useful from this particular boondoggle.
Failure to move the project forward made me look back and my rules and ask myself why it didn’t move forward. It turns out that I broke two of my creative rules:
· Don’t let should take the place of will. A lot of my energy on the coloring book was coming from the urgency that I should get it published ASAP. That “should” energy can turn negative fast. It can turn into self judgement. In the end, this is project that needs more slow time and care to be completed.
· Don’t invent time that doesn’t’ exist. But worse, I decided to finish the project without setting aside the time to do it. Had I taken a few days off work to finish it, that would be different. By not setting aside time, I set myself up to fail and feel bad about it.
So, given that this project is so promising, what could I have done differently?
Asking this question made me realize something. Sometimes what you need to move a project forward is help. Good help sometimes comes free from friends, family, and supporters, but professional help is something you should pay for.
What if I had a person I could give instructions like “Look up the author bios for all these writers online, then send each of them an email asking if this is OK to use as a bio for this coloring book, or do they want to provide something else?” That’s a one-hour task that utterly wipes me out, but that a smart intern or employee could do just as well. What if I had someone I could pay for just 10-20 hours a month to work with me on the parts of publishing that constantly suck my psychic energy?
What I’ve learned is that at some point in the future, I’m going to want to hire someone. I’m not there yet, but my long-term plans demand it.
So, I’ve added that idea to my “long-term” file to revisit later. That’s another important tip—keep track of the things you learn, even if you can’t implement them right away.
What’s coming up
I’m a little shy of making promises now. You don’t want to hem yourself in with promises you might fail to keep. But you also need to make commitments and plans for the future. So, for the first few months of 2024, I’m going to try it this way:
Write a Substack article every two weeks. I’m loving this routine, but now I have a backlog of game material, and I need to work on it. These posts feel like letters to my readers, and I like that. But I can’t write letters all the time, much as I’d love to. So, I’m dropping Substack to every 2 weeks.
Write more setting, scenario, and adventure material. I want to put out more playable stuff, including maps. These could also fill in some of the off-weeks in Substack-land. I’ve got a stack of maps and material just waiting to be put in order and published.
Get back to measuring progress. During November and December, I had a hard time quantifying and qualifying what I was getting done. In retrospect, I think that’s a big indicator of split focus. I’m going to get back to using the copy cup diagram and sharing it on a regular basis with you all. So, there will be more “coffee cup” posts in the future.
Happy New Year, folks!
Best laid plans of dice and men...