Advice Sought for Larger Projects

Homeschooling mother here, have recently begun work fleshing out ideas for a couple of larger projects--am brainstorming for a history curriculum and a book on Distributism for children. (Yes, I am certifiably crazy.)

I know many Permies have experience actually completing big, book-sized projects, so please give all your best tips for sticking to a regular routine and making consistent progress even when feeling bogged down! It's easy to have great ideas, but persisting to accomplishment and delivery is the important thing.

Thoughts?

I'm just starting a non-fiction series about Arabian horses, probably 10-12 books total.  It' sounds like a large project but I've been a professional writer for nearly 20 years now, so my writing process is pretty well-set.  If I get one book in the series done a year, that'll be fine, but I'll also be working on novels at the same time.  Trying to do this much when I started out would have been impossible but now I know what I'm doing so it's all good!

When I started professionally writing I was a newspaper reporter.  I was constantly on the go, getting the stories my editor wanted ("blood and guts" because that's what people want to read), occasionally getting the editor to accept lifestyle/human interest articles.  When I got offered a contract by a university-related organization as a researcher/analyst/technical writer, I leaped at the chance because aside from a few meetings a month I could work from home.  I did that for twelve years or so until I weaned myself from that work to focus on writing for myself.

The discipline of writing for myself is no different than it was before.  What I do is like working a 9-5 job: if I'm asked to do something that cuts into my work schedule, unless it's super important I say I can't because I have to work -- and then I DO work.  

If you're going to take on the projects you're talking about, then you've got to carve out regular hours and stick to them.  If you've got kids, you've got to have a place to work and your kids have to learn to leave you alone while you work.  If you have an office with a door, then close the door and get to work!  (A monitor so you can keep an eye on the kids might help you close that door!)

What I do during my work hours:  I begin by spending a lot of time researching.  I want to be absolutely clear I understand what the end product should look like by studying products similar to what I have in mind.  I'm talking about content as well as format -- both are important.  If your projects include publishing, then you need to also decide on a publishing method (self, hybrid, or traditional) and then research what you'll have to do to accomplish publishing using that method.

Then I start reading other people's work on the same topic.  I want to be sure that I'm not reinventing the wheel.  I want to be sure I'm bringing something new to the world about that subject.  I take notes -- LOTS of notes.  I keep lists of references so at the end if I need to give credit I don't forget anyone.  

Oh, about the notes:  You need a method of organizing them or they'll be worthless.  Paper or digital, doesn't matter, you have to file everything in a meaningful way or don't bother taking notes at all.  

I'm not sure what your history curriculum will entail, so I'll address the book (even though I don't know what distributism means or why children should read about it).

Somewhere along the line you'll have the irresistible urge to actually start writing your book.  That's when all the research you've done makes your life easier.  By this time you should have developed a strong idea of what information your book needs to include -- not just in general but specifically.  This is the point where you need to organize all those ideas & notes into what amounts to a working outline (this doesn't have to be a formal outline!)  Note that some people find writing outlines to be impossible.  If you're one of them, you'll find that if you wait to outline until *after* you've done everything I've said, and then you simply organize it, the outline will flow from that painlessly.

So take your notes and put them in a logical order based on the research you've done.  Fiction or non-fiction, there is still a beginning (where you present your project), a middle (where you describe everything that needs to be explained about your project -- and having researched how others do this comes in real handy here), and a conclusion (where you summarize the project and add any concluding remarks you feel are necessary).  

Then flesh out those notes.  Write a first draft of your book.  Don't bother worrying about saying what you want to say correctly, just make sure you're saying things.  Spew it all out!  This is where it's even more important that you've got your work hours set and that you stick to them!  It could be an hour a day or eight hours (I don't recommend eight!).  Probably two is about right.  They don't even have to be two hours in a row but each session definitely needs to be no less than an hour.  You won't accomplish anything trying to work in five minutes grabbed here and there.

It could take a long time to write a first draft.  Don't sweat it.  Just keep writing it.  The rule for writing is "butt to chair", meaning you can't just think about it, blog about it, dream about it -- you have to sit down at your desk and actually do it.

More advice:  When you're doing things that don't require you to think much about them, such as washing dishes or vacuuming, pulling weeds, whatever, use that time to think about the last thing you wrote and the next thing you will write.  I find the time I spend cleaning my horses' pens to be so valuable for thinking about my writing that I include it in my books' and stories' bios!  I also use my cell phone to record my thoughts as they come to me, because I can guarantee all that good thinking will disappear if you don't capture them immediately.  Quite often those recordings wind up going straight into my current project .

That's probably way more than you wanted to know about sticking to a regular routine, but if you don't have a full plan you have no plan.  You need to know the beginning, middle, and end of your project's progress just as much as your book needs to have a beginning, middle, and end.

Oh, and maybe the biggest tip of all:  You will feel overwhelmed.  Don't sweat that!  It's a symptom that has a cure, it's not something to be afraid of.  When you are overwhelmed it just means you've taken too big a bite.  It means you need to break down whatever stage you're at (research, organization, writing, publishing) into smaller steps.  No matter how small the steps are, if you've bogged down take a smaller step.  And by the way, when you have to create new, smaller steps, make sure you change your organization/outline to match!

I don't know how much of what I've written here is useful, but honestly there are whole books out there about how to get a book done!  One that I've read most recently is Refuse to Be Done, by Matt Bell.  Highly recommended.

The War of Art I think it's called, by Steven Pressfield is the best book on writing or creative work that I've read. His other book, Doing the Work was also good.

That said, I haven't published any of the books I've written and they all need a lot of editing...

L. Johnson wrote:The War of Art I think it's called, by Steven Pressfield is the best book on writing or creative work that I've read. His other book, Doing the Work was also good.
That said, I haven't published any of the books I've written and they all need a lot of editing...

Interesting looking book, though I have to say that writer's block isn't an issue for me.  Part of that, I believe, is that I've done so much prep.  The other part is that I devote real time every day to letting my mind free to meditate on what I'm doing and ideas just pop in all the time.

Thank you so much for your in-depth reply!

Lif Strand wrote:I'm just starting a non-fiction series about Arabian horses, probably 10-12 books total.  It' sounds like a large project but I've been a professional writer for nearly 20 years now, so my writing process is pretty well-set.  If I get one book in the series done a year, that'll be fine, but I'll also be working on novels at the same time.  Trying to do this much when I started out would have been impossible but now I know what I'm doing so it's all good!

Good luck and have lots of fun! You sound so organized and methodical, I bet you will enjoy this project very much.

One question: How do you know when you've done "enough" research to leave that stage for the writing stage? Do you just get the sense internally that you know enough on the topic(s) at certain point that it begins to pour out of you, and then you are sure you are ready to write?

Rachel Lindsay wrote:Thank you so much for your in-depth reply!
Good luck and have lots of fun! You sound so organized and methodical, I bet you will enjoy this project very much.

One question: How do you know when you've done "enough" research to leave that stage for the writing stage? Do you just get the sense internally that you know enough on the topic(s) at certain point that it begins to pour out of you, and then you are sure you are ready to write?

My method isn't the result of being a naturally organized person (my house is a WRECK!) but it's an act of survival.  When I wrote for the research group I always had to incorporate other people's commentary in my documents (meaning I might have to change a whole bunch to accommodate that commentary, which was generally from scientists and other specialists in other fields), and I had strict deadlines that could have dire consequences for the research group's clients.  So the pressure was on and organization saved my butt.

Research is an at-need thing.  Researching the technical details (what kind of information is expected from a certain kind of book, what the format of those books are like, what publishers' requirements are) all have built-in ends.  You discover what is required and you make sure you are able to be guided by that.  It makes sense to do that first thing so you don't find out at the end you've got major revisions to deal with (believe me, I've been there/done that).  This research doesn't take all that much time.  

However, research that helps you flesh out your content is an on-going thing.  I do a lot in the beginning to be sure I understand the issues correctly and that my ideas are not hare-brained (no offense to hares, because they seem quite smart to me).  At some point I find I just can't find anything really new to add to my information bank, it's all just the same stuff I already have.  That's when I stop the primary research.  I call it primary, because as I do the actual writing I will have questions that pop up as a consequence of the logical flow of my thoughts.  I do a lot of blogging about music and magic (as similar acts of creativity) and I have found that sometimes I'll forget a date, or a location and when I go back to my notes I have sometimes discovered conflicting data -- so that means more research.  But that's limited research.  At some point, like with the technical research, you know you are done with that.

So, you see, there's no research and then, separately, writing.  There is a flow from one stage to the other with overlap.  You might not have noticed that I stopped my original post with the rough draft.  That's because you'll be repeating some of the process again as you edit, revise, and sometimes completely rewrite.  You may do more research then, too.  So the difference between the first draft and the final is that there's a lot of research in the beginning and not so much (or maybe none) at the end -- but there is writing all along.  

You don't not write at any point -- it's just that at certain points in the process you're doing more of one thing than another.  However, I highly recommend heavy on the research at first.