Karen GoatKeeper's Blog - Posts Tagged "completing-a-book"
Blackmailing Myself
I started "The Pumpkin Project" ten years ago. It was fun. It was challenging. I roared ahead on it.
Then my mother became ill. Work stopped.
For me it is much harder to return to a writing project than it is to start a new one. Perhaps the new one has that aura of excitement the older project wore through. Perhaps the vision of what the older project was to be has slipped away. Perhaps there is a difficult part in that older project and a new one lacks those snags for now.
Bit by bit I am working my way through "The Pumpkin Project" as I must get it done this year. Every year I tell myself: This is the year I will finish it. And each year slips away.
This year I'm doing some personal blackmail.
First I'm posting the Investigations on my website over the summer as my Outside Project. (This has the added benefit of having most of the projects already done instead of needing to be done.)
Secondly I signed up for CampNaNo to do an edit of the book.
I did make it all the way through all the written parts, the stories, the Projects and the Investigations. They are now formatted the same way. The stories sound good and are rearranged to fit into the book better. The main Project is split into more doable pieces and enlarged so anyone, even apartment dwellers, can do it.
Now I get to go through the book again. All the Investigation tables will become images and look nicer. All the pictures will be resized and will look more uniform throughout the book.
Just in time warmer weather is arriving here in the Ozarks. Time to plant my pumpkins: giant, sugar pie and miniature (in a container). There are those missing pictures to take. I even arranged with other people to grow some pumpkins and take pictures in case the squash bugs attack my vines.
Will this year be the year "The Pumpkin Project" gets done? Determination, persistence and blackmail say yes.
Then my mother became ill. Work stopped.
For me it is much harder to return to a writing project than it is to start a new one. Perhaps the new one has that aura of excitement the older project wore through. Perhaps the vision of what the older project was to be has slipped away. Perhaps there is a difficult part in that older project and a new one lacks those snags for now.
Bit by bit I am working my way through "The Pumpkin Project" as I must get it done this year. Every year I tell myself: This is the year I will finish it. And each year slips away.
This year I'm doing some personal blackmail.
First I'm posting the Investigations on my website over the summer as my Outside Project. (This has the added benefit of having most of the projects already done instead of needing to be done.)
Secondly I signed up for CampNaNo to do an edit of the book.
I did make it all the way through all the written parts, the stories, the Projects and the Investigations. They are now formatted the same way. The stories sound good and are rearranged to fit into the book better. The main Project is split into more doable pieces and enlarged so anyone, even apartment dwellers, can do it.
Now I get to go through the book again. All the Investigation tables will become images and look nicer. All the pictures will be resized and will look more uniform throughout the book.
Just in time warmer weather is arriving here in the Ozarks. Time to plant my pumpkins: giant, sugar pie and miniature (in a container). There are those missing pictures to take. I even arranged with other people to grow some pumpkins and take pictures in case the squash bugs attack my vines.
Will this year be the year "The Pumpkin Project" gets done? Determination, persistence and blackmail say yes.
