How to Keep Going on a Long-Term Project
A newsletter about writing, art and living more creatively
Hi friends,
I've officially written 57,000 words.
A full manuscript!
I've never written anything that long before. I had a lot of guidance thanks to a class I took with Megan Stielstra, which I am forever grateful for (I even cried about it).
It got me thinking about long-term projects and why they are so scary to me. I think the lack of predictability is one thing. Questions that go through my mind: will anyone read this? will people get bored? what if I wasted my time? should I have been doing something else? Is this going to benefit anyone else?
Do you think these things, too? Or is it just me? :)
Anyway, in line with thinking about big projects, here are some things that helped me aka how to keep going on a long-term project:
Carve out SMALL amounts of time. Sometimes I thought "oh, I have all of saturday to write!" and then... I cleaned the house, cooked, etc, because, well, I had the whole day open. I was really productive when I said "I have an hour to write before I meet a friend via Zoom" because it was like a sort of built-in deadline.
Talk to someone new about the project. Even though I was self-conscious that people would get sick of hearing me talk about the book (and that I would get sick of it), talking to new people about it helped. Their excitement got me excited again. Or their questions got me thinking about a new angle.
Get curious again. Speaking of a new angle, this helped me dive back in. I jumped from chapter to chapter. I thought about another thread I'd written down in my notebook. I gave myself space to jump around so I could get curious of where the project could go again (just like when I first started writing it).
Join a class or a critique group. I love what Hrishikesh Hirway said in a recent interview: "I crave input. It’s harder for me to be around silence for too long. I definitely want interaction with people, with the world." This made me feel less weird! My usual writing is quicker and seen by other people's eyes more often so it was hard to keep going on the long-term project. BUT taking a class made it easier. Ask friends to give you feedback on a project, join a critique group, take a one-day workshop, anything that helps with this. (Also: listen to Hrishikesh's podcast Song Exploder!)
Hope this helps! Hit that REPLY button if you have any questions/comments/suggestions for future newsletters.
In my own work:
I wrote about Kaabo Clay Collective.
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Your favorite small but feisty writer,
Eva
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