A Bigger and Better Plan

I like making plans, but I always have to add a qualifier to that statement.  I don’t like planning events or even what I’ll be doing next weekend.  I like plotting out of my life and making plans for achieving goals.  The more charts and graphs required, the better.

This is all quite obvious if you get a hold of my laptop.  There’s document after document labeled things like 5 Year Plan, Writing Goals, Blogging Goals, and Weight Loss Goals.  Each credit card I’m paying off has its own color-coded chart showing how much to pay each month.  Really, one of the most exciting things about working to get out of debt is all the charts it requires me to spend too much time making and revising.

Making plans has always been empowering for me.  Deep in my bones I have that American attitude that you can change anything about your life that you don’t like.  The first step is to make a plan!  This is the fun part for me.  I guess I just find the prospect of change exciting.  Sometimes it’s the only way to feel like you’re not stuck in place.

It takes a lot more than making a plan to ever actually change and I have certainly experienced my fair share of failure.  Perhaps even more than my fair share, because I’ve never been afraid to dream of living differently.

For a while my plans were so tinged with failure that I stopped creating them.  Evidence that it’s not just about the pretty charts.  In fact, what strikes me as so odd right now is that I’m actually succeeding at both of my two major goals: get out of debt and lose weight.

That’s changed the feeling of plan making for me, because it’s always been driven my present failure and hope for something different.  It’s how I take control–or at least feel like I’m taking control–of my life.

But, I have that feeling again.  It’s related to writing and specifically fiction.  I feel right now that I don’t know what to do next.  I mean, I can say what I should do and I have already written out a list in that document titled Writing Goals, but here I have time on my hands and I don’t know what to do with it.  My instinct: a bigger and better plan.

More than a plan is required, though.   If there’s a disconnect between me and bullet list of goals, then I’m never going to succeed.  There is no plan for getting your head in the right place, except that you keep after it.  It would be easy for me to continue avoiding writing fiction.  I can just think about doing it and write about doing it, but never get into the hard work of actually creating, even when it’s painful.

I try to take the attitude toward writing fiction that you have to show up to the (metaphorical) office every day and sometimes you’ll get down three pages of writing you’ll promptly throw away the next day and sometimes you’ll be struck by brilliance, but you won’t get anywhere if you don’t at least show up.

That will be my plan and once I have some momentum, I’ll figure out a way to color code it.