In the heat of the moment, I’d nearly forgotten my plan for this year. In the busy-ness of the business of getting the Untrue Tales series written, edited, and published, then made into an eBook, and now into an audiobook… In the sudden long moment of everything involved in my Kickstarter project (My Life in the Future of Publishing) and its promotion… In thinking about (now planning the structure of, now worldbuilding) my upcoming vampire duology and in considering whether it’s a good fit to be made into a graphic novel… In signing up for, researching, and trying to decide on a project for Script Frenzy (which is like NaNoWriMo, but for scriptwriting – and I’ve next to no experience with scriptwriting)… Not to mention the beginning percolations of ideas for fresh art projects beginning to bubble up…
With all these projects and ideas and such burning to the fore of my mind, keeping me continuously busy for the first quarter of 2011 (and beyond), my initial plan for the year nearly faded from my thoughts. If you’ve also managed to forget it, it went something like this: My general goal is to write/publish 2 to 4 books per year and I’ve already done that much (with the Untrue Tales series), so there’s no real pressure (from my own goals) to try to finish any new books this year. This gives me the freedom to spend more time reading, to make progress on my “reading list,” as it were, not just books for pleasure but books for research (for several upcoming books I’ve got in mind, but don’t want to write without a lot of appropriate reading first). I’d also like to get some time invested in working again on my art, in taking it in a new direction, and in trying to produce beautiful artwork free from commercial concerns.
This last thought is perhaps the central one; to move to a place where the work I’m doing is no longer driven by commercial concerns. I think I’ve got our finances structured now in a way which will allow me to fully realize that mindset before the end of 2011. …though not if I continue to allow myself to obsess over things like getting funding, like promoting & marketing my creations, and/or like trying to learn how to write commercial/normal/formulaic books (or screenplays).
Anyway, I’ve been having some trouble keeping my mind focused, lately. I’m pretty sure the proliferation of projects preceded the present peripatetic propensity of my thoughts. Either way, it’s too many things, within and without. All things I want to accomplish, but I’m not confident a hurry in any way enhances or improves those accomplishments, so I’m going to try to slow down and take things one at a time. Try to focus on each thing in turn, if I can, instead of focusing on none of them at all. I’m significantly less stressed than I ever was working for someone else, or working for money, but those things are like infectious splinters, wedging their way into everything and poisoning even the good in life – and I am more stressed than I’d prefer to be because of them.
If my Kickstarter project gets funded, I’ll try to focus on that. If not, maybe I’ll try to focus on screenwriting for a month. Otherwise, I’m just going to focus on reading and on gradually developing the ideas, structure, and meaning of my upcoming vampire duology… while I try to adjust my frame of mind.
