Saturday, September 21, 2013

Settling In

The boys have been back in school for a few weeks, and Tom has been at work a bit longer than that. As much as possible, given the fact that I now have two members of the household who work unpredictable schedules, I am settling into some manner of a routine.

Right now the routine involves housework, construction, cooking, selling on eBay, promoting the books we've already published, and writing, as well as keeping up on my coursework (and you can hear some of the results of what I'm doing at SoundCloud). I'm also trying to get ready for winter, including whatever preparations need to be made to install our wood stove.

But starting October 1, I'm adding some heavy work to my routine: the fulfillment of my 52-Week Creative Challenge. I have announced that I'm going to create, in the 52 weeks following 10/1/13, 52 online videos. 26 songs, twelve Kindle articles, four books, and one feature-length screenplay.

It sounds impossible. For all I know it might be impossible. But when I was taking my first songwriting class, I managed to create a song from scratch in about two weeks while going through Hell Week and opening week of a play that I was running the booth for. And the second time I took the course, I did the same thing, although in that case at least the play I was appearing in was over before the final weeks of the course.

With the new tools that I've learned, and some organization, I think I can do this and still fulfill all my other obligations (including, yes, theater; I'm running lights for Fiddler On the Roof and planning to audition for two shows next year). What the course taught me is that, if I organize my thoughts at the start of a project, I can get the writing done according to a schedule. If I can sustain that for a whole year, then I will have a substantial body of work out there in the world.

And even if I don't quite meet my goals, I still will have done a lot more work in the coming year than in any of the years past. So, whatever the outcome, the effort is worthwhile.

And there is something you, dear reader, can do to help. Tell everyone! And while you're at it follow me on YouTube, SoundCloud, Twitter, and my blog about the experience (and if you're not a member of any of those sites, at least bookmark the YouTube, SoundCloud and blog links so you can look in on them from time to time).

But definitely tell everyone you know online to look in on me, because the more people know about this, the harder it will be for me to back out when the going gets rough. And that's just the kind of push that I need.

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