Have you ever gone out to a nice restaurant, looked at the menu and seen the most delectable dish that calls your name? You look at it, decide it’s too much to eat, move on and, invariably, come back to it and, somehow, despite your best intentions to behave and not overeat you order it anyway?

You have? Me too.

That’s actually what my writing and podcasting workload has felt like lately. There’s all these great things to work on, but if I try to do them all I’ll be overextending myself. I’ve got ‘Get Published’, ‘GalaxyBillies’, my YA novel rewrite, my short fiction. They all take time and I want to do them up right.

Then there’s preparing for Balticon, Con-Version, Surrey International Writer’s Conference and any other cons I hear about. They each need something different in the way of preparation.

So, where do I draw the line?

I actually don’t know if I need to draw a line. I just need to be better at time-management and take small bites from each. For example, I know I need to write about 4,000 words for each episode of ‘GalaxyBillies’. I have about eight days to do that so I need to write 500 words per day. That should take me no more than 1 hour.

Then I need to rewrite the YA novel. If I can do 250 words per day with a few extra on the weekend, I should be able to get it finished in good order. Doing that, I can still have time for sleep and family (that’s the theory, anyway).

The alternative is to let some of the projects sit for a while. But which one? I can’t let ‘Get Published’ go and I certainly can’t stop writing and podcasting ‘GalaxyBillies’. The story is getting good and I’ve made commitments to my listeners. Do I dump my short fiction? How about the YA novel rewrite? If I do either of those then I greatly reduce my chances at getting published.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just keep them all.

Unfortunately, I also have to give up a few (more) things. I’m already down to about an hour of TV per week (OK, maybe two) so there’s not much to go there. I can’t give up the little exercise I’m getting now and Family Time is sacrosanct. I will NOT give that up. They’re the reason I work in the first place.

That leaves… sleep? I don’t know if I can give even an hour of that up. That means I’ve got to get much better at time-management. Got to, got to , got to.

It’s going to be tough because I’m not a schedule kind of guy. I plan what I’m doing and keep it pretty high-level, but I never regiment myself to the point where I have things down to the hour when it will happen. Unfortunately, I think that’s what I need to do.

<right hand raised, left hand over heart> I promise to be more regimented in my writing/podcasting habits and get all my projects under control and finished. Oh yeah, and no new projects until a few of these are finished first.

Maybe one more small, bite? Nope, not even one.

Personal Update

Nothing new to report. Still writing, still podcasting. I haven’t heard anything new on my last contest entry. I am waiting to see how my auction items on The Boom Effect do. That will mean a bit more work for me, but, if the time management thing works out, won’t be too big a problem.

Tags: Galaxybillies, Get Published, irreverent muse, Michell Plested, podcast, projects, schedule, work, writing

First of all, let me say that my change of plans is not a bad thing. I am not stopping anything that I am already doing (i.e. weekly blog entries or either of my podcasts). I’m not even reducing the frequency of what I’m doing.

So just what the heck is going on?

Enough mystery. Let me explain.

It had been my intention to offset my two podcasts. Do ‘Get Published’ one week, ‘GalaxyBillies’ the next. They are currently being released the same week. I looked at that schedule and wondered if it wouldn’t be better (from a shear level-of-effort)  to have them offset.

I planned to do a quick release of ‘GalaxyBillies’ for a couple episodes to get me to the place I wanted to be. I’ve even had some (limited) success doing it. I think I’ve managed to get it pulled back from a Saturday release to a Thursday. A small victory, but I’ll take what I can get.

Then I sat down last night to plan February. What interviews/episodes I would have, what other activities are occuring and so on. I discovered that of the four weekends in February, I’m out of town for three of them. That got me thinking, how smart would it be for me to be podcasting every single weekend? Was I insane? It was then and there that I realized two podcasts the same week wasn’t as foolish as I had first thought.

That means I will continue, at least for the forseeable future, to release an episode of ‘Get Published’ and an episode of ‘GalaxyBillies’ the same week. I’m going to try to offset the two by a few days, if possible, but that is all. I reserve the right to change my mind, of course.

Personal Update

Sent first non-fiction (and non-paying) article out today. I hope it will be accepted because I really believe in what I wrote and think it is well-written besides. This is part of my “I should be doing more” initiative. With luck, I will start sending a few of these out a year.

My Absolute Xpress Flash Fiction entry didn’t make the cut, unfortunately. C’est la Vie. Perhaps I’ll run it through Critters and send it out somewhere else.

Thirdly (or is this ‘c’?) I am submitting one of my YA novels to another publisher this week. The publisher is expecting it so here’s hoping on that front as well.

The next episode of ‘GalaxyBillies’ is almost finished (writing-wise) and I’m happy with how it is turning out. I’ve had some very encouraging feedback on the story so far.

Lastly, I have a great guest on the upcoming (February 7th) episode of ‘Get Published’. I think listeners will get a lot out of the discussion.

Tags: absolute xpress, Galaxybillies, Get Published, irreverent muse, Michell Plested, podcast, writing, YA