118 Days: Update on Forge

So, it’s September. Kids are returning to school. We’re all waiting for relief from 90+ degree weather. Well, maybe not all of us. But I sure am. Bring on sweater weather and pumpkin spice. No irony. Complete earnestness. I love anything and everything pumpkin spice.

Look, I just really love autumn. I love getting back to teaching. I love watching the leaves turn. I love foggy early mornings. I love a warm mug of tea on chilly evening. I love scarves and boots and coats.

Bring me the fall.

As we’re on the cusp of this seasonal change, I wanted to post an update about where I’m at in the process to publish Forge. Although 2018 has been a intense year on a personal level, I’m still on track to publish in late December.

Scene breakdowns

My mental health is the best it’s ever been, but healing from c-PTSD (Yeah, my diagnosis has evolved since we last talked.) takes the time it takes. Life takes the time it takes.

My biggest hurdle in any big project (like, I don’t know, publishing a book) is the barrier to entry. It’s starting, or it's what I have to do to get back into the project after interruptions occur. Which is basically just a different kind of starting. Many things came up this year, as happens in life, that interrupted my progress and momentum.

For me, my ability to finish a big project, or to figure out how to finish, comes down to turning the project into something concrete instead of abstract. Breaking down the output (finish and publish Forge, which is abstract) into its discrete input steps (revise three scenes a day for X, which is concrete). Once it’s concrete, I can make an action plan. With said action plan, sitting down to work becomes vastly easier to do. Because I have a direction. And I actually feel like I'm making progress.

"13 Week" Calendar

I wrote in January about starting a fire as a metaphor for overcoming barriers to entry or reentry. So, today, I took my own advice and mapped out what I have to do in the next 118 days before 2018 is over in order to publish this book.

Even though the next 118 days are going to challenge me, for the first time, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I can actually visualize publication for this book. Which I hadn’t been able to do before.

Today, I started burning paper to restart this fire. I mapped out my plan. I’m tracking that plan in concrete, visible places using: a PlannerPad, a whiteboard calendar, a Self Journal, the Self Journal “13 Week” calendar, and a handwritten list of the next batch of scenes I need to work my way through.

Today, I finished the list of things I need to do each day in order to publish Forge in 2018. And I finished the things on the list for today. The paper has lit the kindling. Tomorrow, I feed the fire. Feeding it every day is how this gets done.

Thanks for sticking with me through this journey and all my ups and downs as I heal. Forge is still on track for a 2018 release. I’ll keep you posted as I move forward. It’s in the plan.