author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

I'll be getting on a train in about three hours (as of the time of starting this blog post), so I'm blogging now rather than later. Today's topic: My cunning plan to accomplish all my fiction goals, both long and short.

I have for many years now considered myself a novelist as well as a short story writer. Even so, I still haven't finished a novel to the point of commercial viability. Some may say this means I don't get to call myself a novelist; I am not going to waste time arguing with them, as there's no profit in it for them nor me. I'm more concerned with problems that actually need solving, to wit, (1) there are only so many hours in the day, and (2) I have not historically excelled at time management.

In short: Until something about problems (1) or (2) changes--say, the Earth's rotation slows down to afford us extra hours in a day, or, possibly more likely, I start using my available hours more effectively--it's simply not realistic to expect myself to make progress on both the short and the long fiction goals in a single work day.

So I'm looking at the space of a year instead.

The inspiration for this obvious-in-hindsight idea was episode 11.33 of the podcast Writing Excuses: Crossover Fiction with Victoria Schwab. Schwab writes across the age spectrum of audiences, from middle grade to YA to adult. She writes one novel in each of those three categories every year. What caught my ear was the way she does it--and I'm having trouble finding the exact quote, but what I remember is, she designates a particular season of each year to each to each of those projects. Which struck me as an absolute genius solution to my own problem. If I were to designate certain months of the year for short fiction and others for novels, then I'm not responsible for making time for both in every single day. Instead, I'm only responsible for making daily time for fiction, period. And that is a reasonable goal.

While I don't want to try to plan the whole year out from here--there are probably factors I'm forgetting to take into account, like travel and appointments and the rhythms of the 2017 roller derby season--it's a no-brainer to reserve November for novel work. Which means this month, October, I'm buckling down to get several short stories newly ready to go. That way, during novel-writing months, all I have to do with short stories--all I am allowed to do with them--is submit and resubmit them.

Which means this month I'm going to get a little antsy about days without a short fiction work session. My hope is that yesterday will have been the last of those. Shouldn't be too hard to bank today toward the goal, since I'll be getting on a train in about two hours (as of the time of uploading this blog post)....