It’s All A Part Of The Plan

I recently began thinking through my topics around planning and how to sustain myself as I enter into the final push to finish Adamsville bk 1. It yielded some interesting observations.

I noticed that the primary way in which we think through the process of finishing something is to plan like this:  I can probably produce one page per day, so at the pace I can do a 130 page book in 130 days.  Seems simple enough right?  But is it very realistic and does it really help you stay on track?  I find that more often than not it actually bogs you down and it still leaves the actual end product somewhere on the proverbial assembly line waiting for you to get there. 

What if we change the way we think about that to something more like this:  When do I want to be done with this book?  August would be my goal.  (now hang with me there’s more steps here)  So that gives me roughly four months.  I have about 62 pages to do during that time.  I then start considering steps that are involved in making a page, which for me is 5 (penciling, inking, lettering, color flatting, final colors).  Four months have basically 30 days in them so I have 120 days to do this in roughly, meaning that I have to do about 2.5 steps a day to be done on time.

Why is this better?  Well what it does that the other doesn’t is gives me an actual completion time and the work that needs to be done to get there.  It’s much more definite.  If I can start to fit in actually 3 steps a day I will be coasting to completion much faster, allowing time as well for vacations and sick time etc.

So think about ways you can organize your project better so you have more clarity over how you can finish your book or whatever it is. 

And here’s a preview page from chapter 3! 🙂