In less than a week, the third quarter of the year will be done. Quarterly IRS payments are due by Sep. 15th.
How are you doing on the goals and milestones you set at the beginning of the year? Now is a great time to re-evaluate, revise if necessary, and re-attack.
Myself, I discovered a couple weeks ago that I had completely failed to make goals at all this year – my 2023 goals were still posted on the side of my filing cabinet. Then again, Nov 23-Aug24 included two emergency room visits, 5 rounds of antibiotics for me, three surgeries under general anesthesia for my love, and two unexpected wind and water related house renovations…
Yeah, I didn’t make my 2023 goals, not even given 8 extra months. I looked at time remaining in this year, current level of “waiting on the next specialist appointment”, and just revised the goals out to 2025.
So, by Dec 2025, I want to publish 4 stories. The five-year goal is to get better at writing by doing a bunch of short stories, so I can work on hooks and openings, different genres, tone, and play with voice. (Shorts have a far faster turnaround time than novels, so I can theoretically get 12 written in a year, instead of 1-2.) To get there, I want to clear the WIP queue.
This is complicated by the way that, on June 3, I started writing a very loud and persistent scene to get it out of my head, so I could get back to the dare book I was trying to finish for a bet by LibertyCon… and I have now passed 21,000 words on this unexpected WIP.
Look, writing it down to get it out of my head has *usually* worked before. Mostly. Does it work for you? How do you deal with these things popping into your head in the middle of writing something else?
Back to the grindstone, and we’ll see if I can get one book done by the end of the year, so I only have to finish 3 books in 2025 to clear the WIP queue, and from thence can start on shorts…
Assuming something else doesn’t derail me.
Mad Genius Club 
12 responses to “75% Done, 75% To Go”
75% with 75% left. Are you sure you’re not building an airplane?
Oh, wait, that’s 90% done with 90% left to go. [cockpit wiring and furnishing, paint, engine mounted and all the accessories tested and in place, ad infinitum]
Writing down the idea often helps me, or I jot it down in my idea book and then ignore it until it fades away, or I have time to deal with it. Except for one story right now, that keeps pestering me until I write a bit on it, then go back to the two projects (and Day Job) that I’m supposed to be working on.
Well, there’s the old Data Processing joke of “we’re 90% we’re almost got it licked” where the time spent on that last bit is ten times longer than the time spent on the 90%. [Very Big Crazy Grin]
90% of the code is to handle 10% of the cases.
And perhaps most applicable, if you do a collaboration, you will do 90% of the work and your fellow writer will do 90% of the work.
The first 90% of the job takes 90% of the time. The final 10% takes the other 90%. 😀
Yes, writing (typing) things down helps in two ways. It (mostly) stops them screaming for attention, and also ensures that later, when you need them, you have them. I have written scenes and whole chapters out of order. Usually in need of some revision when the rest of the story catches up with them, but much better than trying to re-create them entire from months-old faded memories.
Such islands of text also provide signposts of where the story is headed. Landmarks, to set course by.
I couldn’t agree more. I have collections of notepad paper with scribbles on them for 5 books in a series.
You need to congratulate yourself on surpassing –the goal you didn’t write down–, because it’s always the goal. It’s called survival. Not only did you survive, but you finally were able to lift your head up and look around, a couple of weeks ago. Honestly, that’s huge. If you wrote a story with four different types of disastrous events, with a total of (2+5+3+2) twelve disasters the protagonist had to overcome, I’m not sure people would accept it. Your Hero(ine) is planning to go on. Sounds amazing to me.
Brain Dumps, Worry Dumps, Future Ideas Parking Lot, GIRD List, Thought Corral, I use all of these, for both art and writing, and life.
Otherwise, I’ll be afraid of losing something and the brain stacks up more and more, and then I do lose something for a while…yeah, stress pile on big time!
This year, has been super crazy for me, too. Thankfully, not medical emergencies, but lots of things going on and being added on, and my health not super awesome, and… So, I took my goals for the year and …slid them. I removed them from my Kanban board so that they weren’t staring me in the face and laughing and pointing. I picked 4 projects and 4 alternate projects, and I’m working on those by babysteps. Knowing that 7 more things will spring up if I cut the head off of one. Babysteps gives you more time to cauterize the wound with a flame-thrower after you remove the head. Thus helping to prevent that issue.
I have gotten to the point that I don’t want to calendar anything, and that is usually a sign of immanent burn-out for me. So, I’m taking it easy, and just doing bits at a time, to hopefully head that off at the pass.
Forgive me, but what is GIRD list?
No surprise you wouldn’t know what it was! I made it up.
So there is a GYST list, but I didn’t like the connotations (Get Your Sh* Together), that I heard of from Sarra Cannon, who got it from someone else. But, I liked the idea. It’s basically a one day list of the things that MUST be done that day, if at all possible, to get you back to “ground zero” (The FlyLady calls a similar thing a Crisis Clean, but this includes other things, too.)
So, I came up with GIRD.
A dual acronymn
– “Gird up your loins” – ie, pull up your big girl/boy panties and just do it.
AND
– “GIt ‘R Done” a saying from Larry the Cable Guy back in the day.
So, a GIRD list for me might have 10 to 15 things that I can get done in short bursts of activity (or more if they are very short things), that are things I’ve been putting off that really need to be done.
Future Idea Parking Lot – is for ideas (on anything) to explore later
Brain Dump – is just all the million things in my head with no sorting (shutting down some tabs)
Thought Corral – Three to five projects with their bullet points, but not ready to deal with.
Worry Dumps – Things that I really can’t do anything about (maybe just at this time, and maybe never)
So, GIRD is the most Active list, not just a ToDo, but a “no holds barred, right now!” list.
Okay, cool! I was doing some of that Saturday. I don’t have a word for it except: “It’s waited long enough.”
Yep.
There’s the story I started over a year ago, that needs to be the next one published to maintain any sort of logical series timeline.
Then there’s the one that came out of thin air and insisted on being written Right Now. And while tidying up, fixing loose ends and bad dialog tags and such, while trying to ignore the logical sequel . . . another story jumped in and keeps sidetracking me to make a quick note, that turns into a chapter . . .
It’s a wonder I ever finish anything.
I can no longer remember what any of my ‘yearly’ goals were. Except for one project, that was not anywhere near as fast as intended.
My mood now is laughter.
I had a to do list for today, and day has wooshed by without list happening.