This past week has been busy and productive, mostly in the continuing series of blog posts based on my journal entries from my first year as a freelancer, 44 years ago.
I started this project in search of some information for my Houdini project, a book about writing a play that I finally completed after four decades. I have the beginning and the end. The journals will help me fill in the middle: what happened to the play in the years in between.
Although this may appear as yet another rabbit hole I’ve fallen down in my quest to finish a project — any project — it has several benefits:
- I’ve identified my procrastination demon and am finding ways to defeat it.
- I’m setting and meeting deadlines, even if the material is written in advance.
- I’ve identified an audience and am writing with them in mind.
- I’m banking this material toward a larger project that will be a relatively quick turn-around.
Meanwhile, some of my readers are contemporaries who know (or are) recurring characters in the story, so I’m giving them shout-outs in my social media. And to help put things into context, I’m introducing some contemporary popular media. Not everything has to be about writing. It can also be about the things that influenced me as a writer.
Coming next week: Another spy-fi influence, a book about a writer (and so much more), and how I listen to a quiet voice inside.
Until then, be seeing you!
In case you missed it …
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Journeyman Journalist, 1979: A little gossip
Reading Time: 2 minutes Opportunity knocked once, then knocked a little harder. And then it just shrugged and walked away. Was it more than just gossip?
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Journeyman Journalist, 1979: A pain in the a**
Reading Time: 2 minutes Procrastination is seldom fatal, but that’s not a certainty. A heart condition, cancer, a serious infection — can be deadly.
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Journeyman Journalist, 1979: Giving thanks
Reading Time: 2 minutes One thing that’s still unchanged: My worries are really blessings. That’s good advice from a 24-year-old to himself a half-century later.
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Journeyman Journalist, 1979: Breathing easier
Reading Time: 2 minutes Smoke-free workplaces are far more common, even public policy, thanks to 50 years of the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout.