I’m a chronic list-maker, filing system conceptor, three-ring binder organizer, and chalk board / white board scribbler. I have outlined the steps for How to Do Everything from completing the in-progress great American novel to preparing fresh green beans five tasty ways. Yet, everything is not done. Doneness is elusive.

Obligatory work that breeds on a regular schedule (grading papers, scrubbing the toilet, getting the old Chevy an oil change, buying groceries) aside, what’s the best way to complete a large project? For a creative project, I know the process is intimate and different for each individual, but there have to be some guiding principles.

I believe the first principle is deciding to have the discipline to try and figure out what your principles need to be. You have to be honest about your weaknesses and also figure out how to structure your time to take advantages of your strengths.

I have rarely come through a big project convinced I took the most efficient route. That said, the efficient route may be impossible when creating original works, as the working and doing of each component opens new doors and lends new knowledge to the creator.  I am trying not to sound hippy-dippy about this, but I do think it is a bit of a mystical feeling for artists, especially writers, to look back at something and think to themselves, okay, that thing there is amazing and full and bright…now…how did I do that? How can I do that again end up with an equally brilliant product? Or for those of us that haven’t sent brilliant work out to the masses yet, how do I finish my big stuff in the first place?

This is where anxiety comes in–there are expectations! Personal expectations for a level of artistry and quality are bad enough, but what about expectations from others (editors, agents, colleagues)?

Despite the evidence of this writing sample, the key here is organization. Organization is simply an arm of hard work. We’re going for efficiency here, remember?

What I have found out about myself by trying to be organized, efficient, and diligent at this novel writing is that my brain does not respond well to various organizational schemes/goals: daily word-count or page-count requirements, namely. The horror! I thought it seemed like a simple idea, an ambitous idea. Oh, the pages I would have if I could have just followed through! I would be golden right now. I abandoned my goals. God forbid, I abandonded my goals.

But, not really. The real goal, the big goal, is the same. I’ve changed how I’m judging, assessing, and organizing my process. Instead of telling myself “Write for four hours today,” or “Finish writing scenes X, Y, and Z today,” or “Gain 10,000 words by next Friday,” I say things such as “Research Milli-Vanilli,” or “Browse images of Regency style furniture,” or “Research differing opinions on preparing Bolognese sauce.” On some days (insecure days) a to-do list like that feels like cheating. But in reality, it is these types of to-dos that lead to scenes getting completed and characters getting developed.

I’ll (eventually, heh) write a follow-up to this: more ideas on how to organize (thereby complete in an efficient manner) a large creative project. I have some specifically writing-related strategies and tools I’ve discovered. If you have any strategies/tools/organizational tactis you’d like to share, please do comment.

How can a writer judge progress on a manuscript? The problem is that the writer can be his only true judge of progress, as much of the ‘work’ he does is indecipherable to others. So, he is the ultimate judge, and he is also the harshest critic. He judges not only the work, but the creator. Forget objectivity. The spectrum of judgement flows from Manic Optimism to a feeling of Wildly Irrational Doom.

The contemporary-gothic-cinderella-pop-music-new-england-island novel fills me with excitement and, at times, dread. The pages are not writing themselves, for sure. Mistakenly, I thought I was at a point to chug through scene-writing, when in fact I am now drowning in research and complex lists of questions for my characters. I have a chunk of the manuscript written, but it is half as long as I’d planned it be by this date, this time in July.

My friend Stephanie, over at Natural/Artifical, posted recently, “Oh Yeah, That Writing Thing.” I could have written many of her words. Stephanie writes,

In other words, Second Novel has suffered — from both a lack of attention and too much attention. From endless brooding and constant avoiding. From comparisons to award-winning work, comparisons to my friends’ work, comparisons to my own work.

It’s safe to say that I pretty much beat the crap out of Second Novel.

It’s no wonder I felt beaten in return.

As writers, we are the dictators of our work. We are the slayers of our work. We build nations. Then we let our people starve. It is because we are ambitious and confident. It is because we are lazy and unsure. Doomed to fail! It can all seem doomed at times. With creativity and creation there is euphoria. With euphoria there’s always a down. We can’t escape the oscillations, and we never will.  Stephanie, clear-headed and not doomed, writes,

I’m learning that sometimes I need to cut myself a break. Which doesn’t mean giving up or taking a vacation, but it does mean going easy on myself when the writing isn’t moving as quickly or as smoothly as I’d hoped.

This is true. Our hopes for our work are always overly ambitious. We just have to remember that, and then we can calibrate our emotional reactions to how we perceive our progress and give ourselves a break. Maybe we can do this, or maybe we will always be falling into holes and then diggind ourselves out again. I’m trying to move forward, as is Stephanie:

I keep asking them questions, scribbling down their answers, and trying to make sense of it all. And I’m not there yet, but certain aspects are becoming clearer. I just have to keep moving forward. I have to remember that I don’t need all the answers yet.

Today I put a wildly huge amount of notes into a black three-ring binder in an attempt to organize (or perhaps quantify?) my work, a big chunk of which is questions, scribbles, and more questions. Most of the  questions will not be answered today, but the mere conception of the questions was a type of work: progress.