The Third Act – The Climb #934

Monday 13th September 2021

As the season changes from summer to autumn / fall so I’m starting to look at some of my projects I’ve started this year and towards getting them complete.

I’ve done a lot, and over the summer I’ve been juggling a number of projects, grinding through the middle. I’ve not always felt productive, but to be honest it’s difficult to see progress when you’re in the thick of it. It’s only when you get those projects complete that you can really appreciate the work.

Obviously, I have ongoing projects and those will continue. The Climb will continue daily, Write Productively and The First Draft are (as was always planned) moving to a weekly cadence after their initial run. But I have other projects that are fixed length that I just need to complete.

The Accursed initial draft is nearing completion. This is going to need revisions and further drafts but I’m happy with how it’s going and I feel the threads drawing in as we enter the last act. It’s a big book with a lot of characters and I’m going to be happy to return to something more tightly focused for my next project, although that won’t start until this is done (and possibly not until next year).

I have other commercial work that’s been challenging (but in a good way) that’s yet to be complete and needs a bit of focus. I don’t have a deadline for it, and if there’s one thing that’s emerged from this year it’s been that I need to be better at project managing myself in terms of personal soft deadlines. Everything gets done but I’m not sure if it’s always done in the most efficient way. Am I better having a number of projects I can flip between or do I need to focus on one thing at a time? I’ve been doing the former and it seems to work for me, but I’ll have a better idea when I can look at my stats at the end of the year. Maybe 2022 will be the year of personal deadlines?

I’ve done a lot this year to try new things. I’ve experimented with my writing, trying new formats. Some have opened new avenues for me. Some I’m still learning the specifics of craft.

But if I’ve been a ship on a voyage of discovery, now’s the time to start turning the ship back towards home, finish off all those projects I have (I think I have 6 or 7 on the go right now in advanced stages) and end the year, back in port, with all those projects completed.

Writing progress is weird because in terms of the size of most of these projects, my daily wordcount barely makes a dent in them. It’s hard to see that progress when a really productive day hardly moves the progress bar. It’s only when you reach the end and breathe that sigh of relief that you can appreciate the daily grind.

So as we go towards October and head into the end of the year, my focus will become less about starting new projects but continuing those ongoing ones and finishing the others off.

This isn’t any change of plan. The plan was always to start a lot of projects, grind through them and then get them complete. I’m just starting to reach the finishing stage.

There’s plenty still left to do but despite the daily chaos, I feel very much on target. Some projects have gone quicker than I thought, some have taken longer, but overall, I feel I am where I should be. It doesn’t always feel like that day to day.

In many ways, if this year is a 3 act structure, the summer has been the second act and we’re now about to move into the third act. With that comes a slight change of focus. The work, however, as always, continues.