I spent the dying days of 2020 making lists of habits I’d like to establish (or, in most cases, re-establish in the wake of 2020’s unpredictable daily routines). Stuff like I’d like to start blogging everyday, and maybe turn the blog into a monthly zine or chapbook’s worth of content or post a free short story to every month or release 52 chapbooks over the course of the year.
All of them fell victim to my inability to pull the trigger on a year-long commitment, and thus risk the body-blows to my ego. Because they were all ego projects, to some extent or another. Attempts to stay in contact with my self-perception as someone who writes as my plans for 2021 looked increasingly focused on editorial tasks.
365 days is a daunting timespan, just as 100,000 words is a daunting amount of words to write if you’ve never written a novel. There’s always the danger that ambition outstrips ability, that motivation fades once the immediate need that drove you to the activity is satiated and you’re left with a whole lot of work thats’ no longer filling the same emotional void that drove you to the project in the first place.
It’s easier to start small and focused: blog for seven days straight. Post a single story for free.
Then stop and re-assess: has it brought me closer to the goal I was trying to achieve? Is it worth continuing in this line?
A whole year is just twelve months, and each month is just a handful of 7 day streaks in a row. If you get caught up in the 365, you lose track of how easy those seven days could be without the looming expectations hanging over you.
(Although I’m still tempted by the 52 chapbooks idea. I may yet pull the trigger on that one).
It’s New Year’s Day here in Brisbane. January 1st, 2021. The hell year of 2020 is in the rear view, and the coming year is shiny and new and only a little splattered by the ongoing shit it inherited from the previous 365 days.
I woke up this morning, wrote three pages, then spent an hour walking around the neighbourhood to check out the damage New Year’s wrought. Here, in my neck of the woods, it’s mostly roadside vomiting and evidence of some kind of car accident at the intersection near my house. More than I expected, as we seemed to be taking things quietly last night, but nowhere near the New Year’s record.
Once home, I made a coffee and fired up a fresh logbook for the year.
Okay, 2021. Now it’s fucking on…
I picked up the logbook habit from Austin Kleon, who advocates for the practice on his blog and in his bookSteal Like An Artist. The process is basically what it says on the tin: log all the major things you do across a day in one place, so you’ve got an ongoing record of your year and what you did with it.
It’s also a way of keeping track of little details: when did I last put the electric toothbrush on to charge (or, for that matter, when did I last change the brush head)? When was the last time I contacted X about that project? How long has it been since we started watching that TV show?
All of that is useful stuff, and usually lives in my bullet journal for review when I need it, but this year I’ve elected to give it a dedicated notebook for two important reasons.
The first is the utility of creating an object that represents time physically, rather than conceptually. It’s one thing to acknowledge that a month has passed, but another to look see the year split between what’s already gone and what is yet to come. There is always a very tangible representation of how much of the year is left, accessible at a quick glance.
The second reason—the considerably more important one—comes down to the fact that 2021 is a transition year. Later today I finish my business plan and submit it to the folks as the NEIS program training, who are ready to sign off on eight months of funding while I try to build Brian Jar Press into a viable small business. I get to put all my attention on editing, publishing and selling books for a stretch, because that funding gives me some breathing space to pay rent while I build up the Brain Jar list.
Which is an outstanding and exciting prospect—especially given everything that’s going on, where there’s very little that’s genuinely excited about—but it’s also a big mindset shift. My brain is still wired for writing a lot, not publishing, and every habit and routine I have is built around getting more writing done.
Couple that with twenty years of my self-identity hanging off the notion of writing for a living, and there’s some days when the transition to publisher is a psychological struggle. I get anxiety about setting aside one part of my career to focus on another, and I grumble about the various publishing tasks which mean 2000 words a day is not a sustainable habit (let us set aside that it’s never been a sustainable habit for me).
At the same time, there’s other life changes our household is navigating: a partner with some ongoing health conditions that mean we’re re-learning routines and the distribution of housework; a global pandemic that’s changed our relationship to damn-near everything, including working from home; my own health issues, physical and mental, which can be managed fairly easily if I pay attention (but always slide the moment I get busy).
Basically, there’s a lot going on right now, and a lot of is new. I have very little idea of how long it takes to get things done, and my attempts to estimate and budget my time is running into roadblocks at every step. Logging is a way to get a handle on that, and recognise that things like uploading one of our new books to all sales sites takes a good six hours rather than the two I’d usually budget.
And thus, I save myself a world of frustration, because I know that trying to write a lot on upload days is a futile exercise. Far better to spend that extra hour targeting a different goal. Basically, the logbook is a tool dedicated to mapping my way through the uncertainty of my life at the moment.
It doesn’t always feel like that—here in the 21st century, we’re used to thinking of maps as things inside the GPS, telling us exactly how to get from one place to another—but all of them started as exactly this: a representation of the route explorers took as they navigated the unknown, so those that followed could find the safest and most efficient route.
AND SPEAKING OF BOOK UPLOADS
We recently announced one of our big projects for 2020 over at Brain Jar Press, offering a six month subscription to the Writer Chaps line of non-fiction chapbooks from some of Australia’s best writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror.
I’ll be back to talk about why these books are so interesting next week, but for the moment I’ll just say this: I kicked this project off by contact six writers whose writing-about-writing was a huge influence on me when I first turned to writing fiction back in 2006. The whole series kicks off with Angela Slatter’s You Are Not Your Writing & Other Sage Advice on January 16, but you can subscribe to the whole first season and Brain Jar Press will send you chapbooks from Angela, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Sean Williams, Alan Baxter, and Kaaron Warren over the coming months.
Earlier this week I launched a Now Page, based on an idea put forward by Derek Sivers about including pages about what you’re focused on right now alongside the customary About and Contact pages.
Most websites have a link that says “about”. It goes to a page that tells you something about the background of this person or business. For short, people just call it an “about page”.
Most websites have a link that says “contact”. It goes to a page that tells you how to contact this person or business. For short, people just call it a “contact page”.
So a website with a link that says “now” goes to a page that tells you what this person is focused on at this point in their life. For short, we call it a “now page”.
I first came across the idea on Warren Ellis’ blog, where he plumbed the flaws of the concept; namely, if you want it to be effective, people need to go and update their Now page on he regular and that’s not an instinctive habit.
Mine is largely reposting content from the blog. This works better for me because I spend more time thinking about blog content than I do overall site structure. I’m more likely to look at an empty day in the schedule and post an update than I am head over to a static page and update it (as are most authors, to be honest; just look at the sheer number of out-of-date bios and book pages on author sites around the internet).
Short version, every time I post an update with the Status tag here, the site will automatically display the latest copy on www.PeterMBall.com/now along with a date-stamp.
Folks who follow the blog regularly will get updates about where my focus is–a net win given that I’m starting to work with folks outside my household–while other folks who want to check on the status of things can click over to the static Now page and get a quick precis of where my head’s at.
