For instance, I have read almost all the works of Shakespeare. I actually have read everything except two very short works in my anthology (I just finished The Tempest this week), but my reading calendar has me reading The Two Noble Kinsmen, which current scholarship says Shakespeare co-wrote. I also read Edward III a few weeks ago, which was not in my anthology, but seems to now be put in the Shakespeare camp. Anyway, that project is pretty much done.

Our Best of Both Worlds goal-setting workshop for the Patreon community happened on December 14, 2021. (This year’s is today, at noon, eastern if you want to join by then…). During that workshop, I decided to do my year-long writing project (basically, a very short morning pages thing I always do) with a specific theme in mind. I would do 365 entries describing a single day in the life of a character. I elected to model this on my day of December 14, 2021. It happened to be a very long and full day, if not particularly life-changing, but I thought it would be interesting to see if I could pace myself through writing 365 100-200 word vignettes on normal life.

And I have! We are closing in on sleep right now on this day, which was almost exactly a year ago, some 348 entires in. I am at 49,577 words, so it will wind up being about 51,000 words or so. This is, technically, a book length manuscript.

I’m a little wary of going through and re-reading it, because it is probably not that great. But who knows. Maybe it’s interesting. The point was more to develop the writing discipline of doing this. Something always comes to me. I have never thought that I have nothing to say. It is also a reminder to me that 100-200 words is easy. It inspires no resistance. But 100-200 words a day over a year is a book. Small things done repeatedly truly do add up. That is true with reading through Shakespeare at the rate of three pages a day, and it is true of writing things.

In any case, if you are looking for a resolution for 2023…maybe you could consider a writing project along these lines! Just write 100-200 words a day on something. The point is not to do much each time. It is to just keep going. Time will pass anyway. We may as well make the journey mindfully.

In other news: I was a guest on Modern Mrs. Darcy’s What Should I Read Next? podcast! This was so cool as it is one of my favorite podcasts. We talk about reading projects and how to tackle ambitious works (like Shakespeare or War and Peace…)

Tranquility by Tuesday is also making a few end-of-year lists. The Globe and Mail listed it as one of the best management books of the year (requires subscription). The Next Big Idea Club listed it as one of the top productivity books of the year. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, would you do so? Thank you!

Photo: Not currently looking like this…more of an icy rain with a tiny bit of accumulation, much to my kids’ disappointment. Dec 14, 2021 was actually unseasonably warm — a detail I remember thanks to my analyzing and recounting every second of that day! 

But I did want to do some more free writing. So I elected to do a modified version of NaNoWriMo, where I’d write 1000 words every work day in November. I would write about characters and scenarios in an existing novel draft of mine (The Norwegian Secret to Enjoying Winter, for the few folks who read a draft of that). I would work out a few things and think through motivations, with the goal of eventually editing that novel manuscript.

There are 20 workdays in November (weekdays minus Thanksgiving and the Friday after) and I just hit 20,000 words. I didn’t mind the exercise much. I simply put writing 1000 words on my task list each day and I did it. I was reminded that I did like my characters and the general world I created. I do want to revisit it and turn something that exists into something better.

Now I just need to figure out when and how I will do that. I honestly want to take a few weeks away from everything else in life and plow through it but that is going to be hard to pull off! We shall see. But a year from now I would like to have a draft that I am happy with. And then maybe in future years I’ll create an entirely new novel…

I’ve spent a lot of time these past few weeks pondering whether I intend to participate this year or not. My current thinking is that I will construct my own challenge, likely writing 1000 words each weekday in my “free writing file” — figuring out ideas I might incorporate in an existing novel draft. I do not think I will be able to carve out a full 90-120 minutes per day, so best not to set that as a goal. An hour is more doable. I could see doing an hour today, but not two hours, and my life will not be different in a week. Future Laura will likely feel the same.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time thinking about what my yearlong projects will be for 2023. The leading contender for a reading project is all the works of Jane Austen (I’m looking for projects that are doable in a few pages a day — to limit resistance — and worth doing, meaning the author’s works have stood the test of time, and that I haven’t read all of them). My current leading contender for a year-long writing project is to write 2 lines in a sonnet every day, thus producing 52 14-line sonnets in a year (longtime readers know that the “collection of sonnets” idea has appeared on versions of my list of 100 dreams). That would also meet my criteria of being doable in a few minutes — to limit resistance — and worth doing.

In any case, it’s a lot of hemming and hawing. Why? Because once I decide to do something, I want to see it through. I really dislike canceling or quitting things. I doubt anyone likes doing so but for myself, I dislike it enough that I’d prefer to quit on the front end — that is, think long and hard about whether I truly want to do something. That’s true for big projects, though it’s true for everyday stuff as well. If I’m going to take something on, I’d like to have a plan, I’d like to have thought through the challenges, and I want to anticipate how I will deal with them.

If I have those three things in place, then it’s not too hard to sustain something, even for a full year. If I don’t, then it will be. And I’ll probably be kicking myself.

Are you taking on NaNoWriMo? What about any 2023 year-long projects?

In other news: I was a guest on The Art of Manliness podcast! This was so cool — I know it has a huge following. If you’re coming here because you heard me there, welcome! I blog a few times a week on productivity topics and daily life. We have a great and positive comment section.

I was also a guest on the lovely Caroline Dowd-Higgins’ podcast, Your Working Life. It is always a treat to talk to Caroline, and the episode is fairly short, so please give it a listen if you’ve got a few minutes!

Photo: Random fall color, fallen to the ground

So it’s basically two years from the start of the research to the launch. And that’s after I’d already solidified the canonical nine rules. This was a longer project than, say, meeting my husband, getting engaged, and getting married (that one ran from February 2003 to September 2004…).

I’ve learned or rediscovered a few things about logistics and planning along the way.

Practice is good. The Tranquility by Tuesday project involved collecting data on people’s time satisfaction and time use, then teaching them nine time management rules over nine weeks. Each week, people would learn a rule, answer questions about how they planned to implement it, then answer questions a week later about how it went. We used Mailchimp lists to send the emails to people and then SurveyMonkey to collect the data.

Doing this entire process twice (first with a smaller group, then a much bigger group) added time to the project, but doing a pilot phase first was incredibly helpful. First, I saw that we would get results with the way we were structuring the study. Second, I could see what questions were clear, and what people were clearly confused by. This made the larger project run far more smoothly.

Much of writing is the raw material. Lots of raw material means that themes emerge and the stories are already there. I undertook the TBT project in the hopes of getting quantitative results, but the sheer volume of qualitative answers people filled out on the survey forms was just amazing. When I went to start writing, I already had a novel’s worth of observations on what is difficult when it comes to time, and what people have tried, and how the rules fit into life and what challenges they faced (and often overcame).

This made writing the first draft feel almost too easy! There was a lot of editing afterwards, but to me, creating a first draft is always the hardest part. In this case it felt more like creating a quilt out of lots of existing colorful blocks than trying to create something out of nothing.

Pace requires space. I already knew each rule would be a chapter, and presumably there would be an introduction and a conclusion. So that was 11 units of writing to be done. I gave myself a time line that generally required writing one chapter each week.

Within each week, the rough schedule was to write the draft on Monday and Tuesday, and then edit it on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday was open because (per Rule #5) it is my back-up slot, in case something pulled me away from the writing/editing earlier in the week.

I left my vacation weeks open during the summer and, during a longer stretch, built in an open week as well. This allowed me to get caught up on stuff that writing had displaced and also not to feel too rushed.

My first draft was due at the end of October, but this schedule allowed me to be done by the end of September. I then could edit the whole manuscript during October.

You can do a lot in bits of time. But deep work is good too. During my first draft writing stages, I tried to leave my mornings as open as possible. This allowed me to focus on the book first before I dealt with everything else.

Life often intervenes, however, especially when one has five kids and is managing a major home renovation. So once I had a full draft, in October, I took an editing retreat to Cape May so I could focus on the book as a whole. I rented a hotel room with a kitchen overlooking the beach (cheap, in the off season!) and spent that time working without figuring out when other people were coming or going.

It was good. I don’t need that often — I am incredibly not-precious when it comes to writing and “the writing life” (whatever that is). But I do need it sometimes.

Hopefully it paid off in a book that works. We shall see what people think!