Tag: Hell Track

Week one is done and it’s been illuminating. I don’t think of myself as a big word-counts-per-day kind of writer. I know I’ve done it in the past, when jamming towards a particularly tight deadline, but it’s always come with an opportunity cost – other projects get neglected and I usually fall into a heap at the end as anxiety kicks me in the teeth. The intriguing thing about the six-week sprint is that it’s part of an eight week cycle in which I’m intentionally neglecting other projects until I hit the regrouping-and-planning phase in week seven, then intentionally taking a week off at the end in order to recover in week 8. It’s a really different mindset, and not having to sort through my pile of projects and make decisions about what gets attention at the the start of the day has been incredibly pleasant. TRANSLATION FOLLIES (OR: TODAY, IN FILM AND FICTION AREN’T THE SAME THING, DUMBASS) The

Day Four of the Hell Track sprint is in the bag, and it’s been another day where working on the project doesn’t necessarily mean charging ahead with word-count. Today and tomorrow, in particular, will be slowed down the shift in focus towards the second sequence (which brings a fresh series of narrative questions to explore) and the need to set aside a few hours to work on my upcoming PHD presentation. USING PLANNING TECHNIQUES AS A PANTSER Back on Day One I shared the outline I’d put together for the book’s first sequence, which largely consisted of half-scribbled notes and scene titles dumped into a scrivener corkboard. I also noted that I’m a planner by necessity and a pantser by preference, which is my early outlines are relatively sparse and I have scenes with labels like “MAGGOT DOES SOMETHING SPECIAL,” acknowledging the story beat I need to hit at that moment to get the rhythms right and trusting the details

Here is the upside of running this project diary alongside my six-week project sprint: it forces me to be conscious of my process and the things that affect it. This was particularly useful today, because I hit a perfect storm of three seperate things that had the potential to derail my momentum: Wednesdays are the days I sent out my Notes from the Brian Jar newsletter, which means that part of my day is given over to preparing the weeks content and setting up the mail-out. Ordinarily I budget two hours a week for this – often spread out across multiple days, but lately it’s been happening on the day. Wednesdays are also my weekly Write Club catch-up with Angela Slatter, which means there is often as much talking about writing. This skews my writing time later in the day, which means I can’t just schedule more short sprints in the event I’m not getting much done.  I got about

The last time I tried this kind of public writing diary, I was working around a couple of restrictions. These included a day-job that limited my writing time, undiagnosed sleep apnea that was having an adverse affect on my mental and physical health, and the kind of split focus that comes from carrying a lot of projects and bad work habits. This time around I’m in a very different place: I can devote a large chunk of my day to this project without getting interrupted; I’ve spent the last few years working on the physical and mental problems; and I’ve spent the last five years getting much, much better at planning and process. It’s also a good point to flag that there’s a considerable amount of privilege behind my process, especially given that I’m now doing a PhD that directly ties to my writing. Which brings us to day two of the Hell Track sprint, where I set out to chase a

I recently mentioned my interest in applying the six-week project sprint/two-week admin and recovery model to my projects in my newsletter, figuring it would be a good way of combating the fragmentation that comes from having multiple projects splitting my attention between writing and exegetical work for my thesis. Basically, by focusing a six-week project sprint focused on achieving one goal, and alternating those between theoretical and creative writing, I carve out clearly defined time periods where I know what to focus on and finish. Today I started off the first of these, focused on a book that’s been kicking around my to-do list for a while: Since I’m trailing a new approach, I’m going to keep a public diary here on the blog where I track the process and the challenges. This a) keeps me a little more honest about my processes than I’m inclined to be if there’s no public consequence for taking a day off, and b) gives