June 2024 Updates
Ongoing writing projects and other stuff I've been working on.
Hello everyone. Something a little different today.
Over on my website, I would occasionally review and evaluate what I’ve been working on whenever I felt like I had too much going on. Since we’re more or less at the middle of the year this seems as good a time as any for a review and I thought I might as well post this here, perhaps to keep myself accountable but also to give you a window into what I’m up to lately.
This week I’m sort of in-between a few different projects and books. My plan for the summer was to focus on one project at a time instead of juggling too many at the same time (not sure that’s working on too well!). Yesterday I made a list to track all of my outstanding projects which looks something like this:
Blog.
Over the past two years of publishing my Friday newsletter, I’ve learned how to put in the work and get this out each week. My next goal is to be able to publish a weekly blog in addition to the newsletter. Additionally, I usually work on a longer post, after having read a book, or done some research on a particular topic. I hope to publish these once per month. For this month’s (or perhaps next month) blog I want to write about Walter Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin. I need to review my notes on this and start writing. I also aim to release a monthly podcast where I sit down with family and friends to chat about music, movies, writing, creativity and more.
While reviewing my notes and various writing folders, I realized I have over 60 unfinished potential blog posts. If i finished one per week, that’s more than enough to cover an entire year of blog posts! I also hope to revise some blogs I originally posted to my website and publish here on Substack, hopefully to a wider audience. I’ve started this process with my recent post on Notes With Attachments.
Fiction.
Since Memorial Day, I’ve tried to put down some words everyday for a fictional project I’ve been working on. I printed out a calendar to keep track of the days I’ve worked on this project by marking off each day with a big X. My goal for this project was 1500 words per day but I think that was too ambitious. I’ve been averaging closer to 500 so 1000 words seems more doable if I can write uninterrupted for an hour. By the end of the summer, I aim to have a rough draft of 150,000 words which is the usual length for a thriller novel. I’m not sure I’m going to make that goal but I’m going to keep putting down words everyday. I’m also not sure what this project will turn out to be (if anything) so I’m just writing and having fun with it!
Reading.
In addition to these projects, I’m also in the middle of two books. I’m about 200 pages into Moby Dick. This is my big summer read and I’ve been enjoying it so far. Once I got into writing for my fictional project I wanted to do some more research so I picked up Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario which has been riveting. I’m reading this during the day and reading Melville before bed.
Archiving.
I’ve also got some archiving to do. My filled notebooks are chock-full of ideas and notes, so it’s fun going back to these, read them and get inspired again about the notes I made. Only a small part of this material has made it into a blog post or newsletter and I want to ‘mine’ these notebooks for future projects. My goal is to scan them so I can index and categorize the notes as well as having a digital backup.
Zine.
Back in May when we celebrated two years of Circles In Space, I wrote that I’ve been working on a zine which I will offer to subscribers. I’ve been working on it here and there but I haven’t yet dedicated time to completing this project. I’m now planning to finish this project by year’s end. This is a fun project but it’s going to take some work to finish. I’ve started reviewing past newsletters and entering the content into a spreadsheet so I can review posts I enjoyed or posts which people connected with. I’ll combine some of these posts with some other notes, info and tidbits, and package it all up into a field-notes style notebook to be scanned and offered as a free pdf zine for subscribers.
So that’s what I’ve been up to lately.
As always, I’ve got a lot on my plate and when things feel like they’re getting a little nuts, I find that it’s helpful to remember the big picture and just put in the work daily to reach these goals:
By the end of the summer:
Finish a good chunk of my fiction project.
Publish a blog post on Isaacson’s Franklin biography.
Publish a podcast.
By the end of the year:
Publish twice weekly.
Read 20 books.
Finish a zine.
Stay organized by ‘archiving’ old notebooks and other work.
As always, thanks for reading! I hope you’re as excited as I am about these projects because I couldn’t do it without your support and engaging with the community here keeps me inspired and creative.