Planning?

The other day I wrote a formal schedule for my writing. I have all these projects and ideas floating around in my head, but I haven’t written them down properly, so I decided to do it. To see if it was doable.

And then I kind of croaked. All my ideas and projects that felt so manageable in my head, was overwhelming on paper. It looks like a lot:

Ambitious. At least for someone whose approach to this writing thing so far has been I want to have fun. 

But if I break it down, it isn’t so much. The Christmas story (that’s now officially named Red Popcorn Strings and Gumball Rings) is written and at about 12K words, so editing won’t take too long.

I don’t have official deadlines for Never Before Him and The Locked Room, even though I really wanna finish NBH asap.

The JMS Submission call I mention is this one, Colors of the Rainbow. It’s the second time that JMS posts a sub call that fits an idea I already had. It’s like she looks into my brain to check out my ideas and before posting submission calls. Do I need a tin foil hat? 🙂 So I feel like I have to write my idea and submit it. It’s going to be about a boy with cinnamon eyes, so I’m calling it Cinnamon for now.

Then there’s finishing everything in June (deadline RPSAGR July 1st and Cinnamon June 30th), before participating in Camp NaNoWriMo again in July. And I’ve already got a story started for that one (Don’t Forget to Breathe). I abandoned it some time back (I tried plotting a story and it went straight to hell—I’m a pantser), but I want to get back to the boys, so I’m gonna rewrite the words I already got and try to finish it.

Sounds reasonable, right? I can do it, right?

It’s just…I don’t usually do long time planning like this, so it feels big and scary. And real.

How do you plan your projects? And how far in advance? Let me know in the comments. And let me know what you think about my plan. Is it doable? Have I lost my mind? Do I need my head examined? 🙂