pen and pencil

At the beginning of this year, I made a wish list of all the writing, personal, and other professional projects I’d wanted to complete over the course of 2013. It was immediately apparent that what I’d spelled out was enough to fill three years of any normal person’s life, so I prioritized and pared down my list and congratulated myself on coming up with what was still an ambitious but exciting plan.

Of course, I’d been too optimistic about my health. I was sick and getting sicker and wasn’t able to get much of anything done. Two months into 2013, I told my writer friends I felt like I was already four months behind.

So I re-prioritized. Several weeks ago, I mapped out a new list of what I want to accomplish within the next 12 months, and what I’d like to have under my belt five years from now. Then I sat down with a 2013 wall calendar and took a realistic look at what I could expect to do (and not do) by the end of this calendar year. For some reason, having the physical calendar on the table in front of me?instead of working with my usual iCal?gave me a keener perception of my own time.

I re-prioritized, again. And I started marking up the calendar. I inked in the deadline dates for my newspaper series and for author appearances I already have scheduled. I inked in monthly Northwest Independent Writers Association (NIWA) meetings, the 2013 Blogathon, and National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November. I used that black pen to mark down everything I was firmly committed to getting done for the rest of the year.

And then I took out my pencil. I still had more that I wanted (hoped) to be able to include, but these were the lower priorities?the items on my “wouldn’t it be nice if I could…” list. I penciled in possible pipe dreams like Camp NaNoWriMo in July, the annual Oregon Star Party out in the high desert, and tentative dates for a book launch in the late fall.

I’ve long heard others casually use the term “pencil it in,” but I’d never tried this literal approach before. Using the pen for some deadlines and a pencil for others actually made many of my goals seem that much more achievable, because I’ve built in flexibility for myself.

I’m still just a couple of weeks into this new “system” of project planning, but so far so good. At the very least, I’ve been able to keep up with the Blogathon more than a week in and I’m making headway on a book rewrite project, all while making steady progress on newspaper deadlines and gaining important ground with NIWA’s Seal of Quality program.

I hope I don’t have to re-prioritize again, but I’m prepared if that happens. And I’m already shopping for a 2014 calendar so I can start marking that one up, too.

Creative Commons photo: pen and pencil by whitakerc1985.