three steps to finish what we started this fall
highlights from the fall planning party, featuring The Magic of One Thing, plus lots more resources for a productive and joyful season of writing
Hello there! Welcome to Write More, Be Less Careful, a newsletter about making space for creative practice in a busy life. I’m a poet and an essayist, and my most recent books are the poetry collection Pocket Universe and the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, which I edited with the poet Emily Pérez. My next book, The Good Mother Myth, will be out in January 2025, and you can pre-order it now!
We’ve got tons of new subscribers this week. (I think lots of you found us through the Sunday Prompt essay I wrote for Suleika Jaouad’s Isolation Journals, which Elizabeth Gilbert (!!!) called “a beautiful meditation on love.” You can click through to read my essay and to see Gilbert’s gorgeous spunky little pup, Pepita.) If you’re new here, welcome!
Hello there! It is absolutely glorious today in my corner of the northeast—sunny and cool, and my kids in school for the first full day of the year. So let’s get down to business. In today’s newsletter, I’ll share the recording from the fall planning party, along with a write-up of the highlights: three steps to finish what we started this fall.
You can watch the video here, if you’d like to plan along live(ish) with us, and/or read the tips below.
The Magic of One Thing
Here’s the big picture of Finishing Our Projects: you have to pick one, then see it through. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got to stay totally head-down until you’re finished your entire novel—you can define Finished, or at least one stage of finished, as wrapping up a chapter, or even a tricky scene—but you do want to create a sense that you’re setting goals and accomplishing them. That momentum can help sustain a writing practice in a busy time. If you’ve set one goal and reached it, it’s easier to sit down and get back to work on the next one.
I learned the value of One Thing from from Jessica Abel, in an interview I did with her years ago, where, she told me
If you’re spending chunks of time all week on the same thing, your brain is going to be working overtime on it. When you’re in the shower: brainstorm. When you’re in the car: things are clicking together. Have your notebook or voice notes app handy. You will have ideas. I guarantee it.
Three Steps to Finish What We Started
1. Pick Your Next One Thing
If you’re having a hard time deciding what to prioritize, I’d really recommend Amy Shearn’s Writing is About Making Choices, published in Memoir Land.
If you’ve got lots of projects, which will you FINISH first?
Is there a deadline? Or is it timely in some other way?
Will it make you money? Advance your writing life in some other way?
Do you feel excited about it?
Would finishing it cause a guilt cloud to lift?
Which thing could you finish fastest?
If you’ve got one big project . . .
What is your next step? Figuring this out might require you to map out lots of steps, then pick ONE
What milestone can you FINISH?
2. Reflect on What’s Getting in the Way—and Probably Ask for Help
If you’re feeling stuck, it might just be that you’re overwhelmed by options or uncertain about what to prioritize, in which case step 1 should help. It might also just be that you’ve had a busy summer and the more regular routine of fall will make a more regular writing routine possible for you.
But if it’s something deeper, if you’re feeling significantly blocked, I’d like to share something I learned from Keri Bertino when I took her really excellent workshop Writing for Fuck-Ups a couple years ago: try to imagine the place where you’re blocked as a snarl, not a wall. What knowledge/help/encouragement/time do you need to start untangling?
So, for your next thing, what do you need? Who can help? (That might be writing help, or if it might be life help. It also might mean helping yourself–choosing to not do some things, or to take shortcuts, or do some things at lower intensity.)
(We talked a bunch here about being okay with doing some things less-than-perfectly to make more space for writing and being really deliberate about what writing projects we take on. I recommended Andrea Bartz’s recent piece about creating a designing principle for your writing life, someone else shared that Dan Blank had written about this recently, maybe in his Creative Clarity exercise? (Feel free to share a more specific link in the comments below—I know there are lots of Dan Blank fans out there!))
3. Plan to Celebrate Your Good Work
So often, we talk about accountability as a kind of club to smack ourselves over the head with—a way of ensuring we’ll feel scolded if we don’t achieve our goals. But I think it’s much more productive if we think of accountability as a carrot: How will you give yourself credit for your hard work? How will you celebrate? I’ve talked about using stickers in my planner to mark writing days. (When I was in the final, really intense drafting stages for The Good Mother Myth, I used little hearts to tally each day’s work. Now that I’m focused on finishing smaller projects, I’ve been using a set of star and trophy stickers.) It’s also a great idea to have a friend you text or email when you’ve finished something. If you’d like more ideas about accountability systems and writing, I wrote about that here.
Let’s Plan to Celebrate Together
In just under two weeks—Sunday, September 29th—I’ll post a thread inviting you all to share your progress. So if knowing that someone will ask how your writing is going helps you to stay on track, note that date in your calendar and get ready to share. I’m excited to hear how your work is going!
In the meanwhile: What’s your next One Thing? Share it now for an extra layer of accountability and encouragement!
Write More, Be Less Careful is a newsletter about why writing is hard & how to do it anyway. I’d love to hear from you. Reply to this email, comment below, or find me on instagram (@nancy.o.reddy).
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Thank you Nancy! This is so lovely
Thanks so much for the shoutout!