Project Rewards: Letting Yourself Work on the New & Shiny

We’ve talked a lot about the diligence required to live a writing life. But what about those project that sweep you off your feet, in the dizzying heights of passion? The new, shiny projects you believe will be THE best thing you’ve ever worked on?

Only you’ve got this thing, this project you used to love, sitting here on deadline. And it looks dull in comparison.

What do you do?

You use the new, shiny project as a reward for getting in your work on the older, deadlined project.

It’s not easy, but it helps keep both projects in balance.

It’s important to jot notes down on the new idea as they come to you, so that you don’t lose them. As I’ve mentioned before, I tend to do my initial notes in longhand. Even if/when I type them up and work off the typed notes, I keep the handwritten notes handy, because they captured the energy I felt when I was first enamored of the project, and when I’m dragging, I can re-read the handwritten notes and feel that energy thrum again.

If you drop the project you’re working on every time you find a new, shiny project, you will have a pile of unfinished projects, which drain your creative energy. There’s a course and a topic workbook on that called The Graveyard of Creative Projects, and it’s a good idea to go through all your projects once or twice a year to decide which get on the schedule, which go into temporary status, and which are laid to rest. It’s a psychological tool which frees up creative space for the projects you see through to the end.

Jot down your notes. Put them in a safe place, where you can add to them as you get new ideas. You are very likely to keep getting ideas as you do dishes, fold laundry, take a shower, etc. (A friend of mine has a whiteboard in the bathroom, so he can jump in and out of the shower, jot down ideas, take the board off the wall when he’s done and transcribe the notes onto his computer. Then he erases the board and hangs it back up in the bathroom).

Now comes the test; You are not allowed to write on New Shiny each day until you have finished your quota of words on your Deadlined Project. New Shiny is the carrot you use to make sure you work on the Deadlined Project.

Saying you “can’t” concentrate on the Deadlined Project because New Shiny is pulling too hard doesn’t cut it. You’re a professional. You want this to be your career? You FINISH projects. Those of you who have day jobs have to do your work on those even with New Shiny pounding in your brain all day. Maybe you sneak off at lunch and write New Shiny, as though you’re meeting a lover for an illicit rendezvous.

But when you’re at home writing all day, you work on your Deadlined Project. You lean into your craft, you focus your concentration, you make THE CHOICE to put your attention there.

New Shiny is your reward for getting the day’s quota in.

You procrastinated and didn’t get the day’s work in? You don’t get to work on New Shiny. It’s a good motivator.

If you’re a full-time writer juggling multiple projects, you might have several things on deadline on any given day. Get in your daily quota on each. If you get a spark and need to make a note on New Shiny, do it on breaks. If you can build in a couple of hours to write a few pages on New Shiny toward the end of your general workday, go for it. You can stay up and work on it late at night. You can get up extra early in the morning, and put in time before you start your regularly scheduled workday.

Writing early in the morning is my preference, but if I work on New Shiny early, I sometimes lose track of the start of the workday, suddenly it’s noon and I haven’t worked on anything that’s due, and then I end up working much later than I should. Because it still has to get done, and if I spend time that was needed elsewhere on New Shiny, I still have to work until my work is finished. I can’t just put it off to another day. Could I set a timer? Sure. But that annoys me. That’s too much structure, and I instinctively rebel. Then I move into self-sabotage mode, and that doesn’t serve the work or me.

If you generally don’t do deadlined work on weekends, then you can block off time for New Shiny on weekends.

When New Shiny pulls hard, I sometimes drag my feet and procrastinate on the older projects. By making time to work on both, albeit with boundaries, I don’t lose the drive on either. I might grumble about the deadlined work, but the motivation to do it means I get to work on the piece that’s demanding attention.

Eventually New Shiny stops being new and shiny and moves into a designated slot in the work schedule, with deadlines (self-imposed deadlines matter as much as exterior deadlines).

And then, something new and shiny flits onto the horizon. And you fall in love.

Learning how to navigate this balance also means, as you move into your vision of being a fulltime writer, you have the capacity necessary to juggle multiple stages on multiple projects that’s required of the writing life.

I’ve found this a good way to keep in balance and not get too sidetracked by fresh projects that seem like the Best Thing Ever when they first appear. Many of them, after twenty or thirty pages, prove unviable. They are given an ending and put to rest. Others hold the energy, or increase in energy, and earn a place in the schedule.

How do you respond to the siren song of new, shiny projects? I’d love to hear it in the comments.

[Side Note: As you know, I joined the Dramatists Guild End of Play program for the month of April to work on a draft of a new full-length play whose idea was born in a workshop sponsored by the Williamstown Theatre Festival last June. On the 23rd, I finished the first draft, 115 pages in 23 days. It needs A LOT of work, but it exists, and I feel that combination of relief, exhaustion, and hollowness I always do at the end of a project].