Thursday! 2-50: I Love It When A Plan Something Something

V2, I50

A friend of mine came into town last night. We’ve known each other for a very long time — long enough that we don’t like to think too hard about the number of years because that number seems entirely too large. She shared something her brother recently told her and suggested it might make a good jumping-off point for a Thursday! essay.

And she was right!

Here’s what her brother said:

“You need to have a plan so you can know when you’re off-track.”

Hmmm. What do we think about this?

I’m a bit of a “plan guy” — that is, I plan a lot of things, even if I have to change my plans a few times on the way from Where I Was to Where I Ended Up. I get anxious when plans stay up in the air for too long. On the other hand, when my plans don’t work out, I feel a ton of guilt¹, which means I’m quick to make plans for fairly low-risk things² and reluctant to make plans for the things that scare me³. After all, if the BIG plans go awry, I might fall farther behind where I want to be in my life and I’ll feel like more of a failure. I don’t care a lot if I don’t get to do all the things I want to do at work tomorrow (so long as the “deadline” stuff gets done) because I can knock them out the next day or next week. No big deal.

Those big things, though…whoof.

In reality, though, big plans are the same as little plans. They’re just roadmaps you draw when you start something. You don’t have to keep the map the way it is and you’re not obliged to go in any particular direction. You can change your route to get to your destination more quickly or more slowly, as suits you that day. The value of the destination might be greater with one roadmap than with another, but they work just the same.

And you need them, anxiety and fear be darned.

Later on in the evening, my friend told me she has problems finishing creative projects she starts. I told her, when you’re telling a story, the most important thing you can do is begin to tell the story and the second most important thing is finish telling the story. And do you know what? That’s a plan. Sure, it’s a simple plan. It only has two points. But how complicated does any roadmap need to be. If you’re going from Point A to Point B, all you really need to have is a plan that says:

1. Start at Point A.

2. Go directly to Point B.

A very basic plan for writing a poem is:

1. Pick a subject.

2. Write a couple of lines about that subject. They don’t even have to rhyme.

3. Write a couple more lines if you like, though you don’t have to if you like the lines you have just the way they are.

Ogden Nash wrote hundreds of poems, many of which weren’t longer than two lines. Haiku are three line poems in English, but in Japanese they consist of a single line. Ezra Pound’s poem “In a Station of the Metro” is lovely in only two lines. Many of Emily Dickinson’s strongest poems were only four lines long⁴. You don't need a sophisticated plan nor do you need a rigid plan to get something good done. You only need a start and a finish.

Now, you might decide to change the plan once you’ve gotten into it. For example, you might begin at Point A and decide you can to take a quick scenic detour to Point C before you get to Point B. That’s fine. You’re allowed. No anxiety necessary! The roadmap is yours. In fact, the entire journey is yours and you get to change course without worrying about success or failure or time. So long as you’re moving with your plan, you’re on track.

I know this week’s newsletter doesn’t have a ton of oomph to it, but I’ve been a bit oomphy lately and I thought this week needed a little less AAAAAARGH YOU CAN DO ALL THE THINGS YOU DESIRE IN YOUR CREATIVE LIFE and a little more calm reassurance. Make a few plans. Don’t worry all that much about the small details — you can fill them in as you go along. Just pick a thing you want to do, and make a beginning. Then finish it. That’s all the plan you need and all you really need to stay on-track. That sounds pretty good to me. How about you?

Okay. I need to do just a little bit of housekeeping now. Please don’t forget to take a look at my Patreon and sign up, if you have a mind. I have a couple of cool videos there in which I share some of my work and I'll be adding more on a more regular basis very soon⁵. Two bucks is the minimum, which is a pretty reasonable amount even with the crazy-bad economy these days.

[Click and Pick — $2, $5, or $20 a month. The process is easy and painless and you’d be helping me move a bit closer to full-time creative work!]

Second thing is, we are coming up on the end of the second year of Thursday! in only two more weeks. Each year is 52 issues and look where we are right now! Last year, I took a little bit of a break in the last two issues of the year and went on a kind-of, sort-of hiatus. I still wrote and sent out newsletters, but they weren’t quite as long nor as in-depth as normal. My plan⁶ for the next two weeks is to share some fiction with you -- a little more of the story of Red, Hosanna, and even Royce. We last left them about to head out on a mission, and you might just find out what happens when they get to where they're going. I don't know if I'll be able to get the whole thing written, but we'll see at least some of it and it ought to be exciting. So that's Issues 51 and 52. After that, we begin Thursday! Year Three.

How cool is that??

1. That may not be the exact truth. I feel several tons of guilt, starting at one and growing in total tonnage as the days go by.

2. Like a vacation trip or tomorrow’s work tasks.

3. Like — oh, I don’t know — submitting poems or stories I’ve written or digging deeper into the job market.

4. For example, “Fame is a bee”

5. Less than a week. I got a little behind because of various things outside my control the past couple of weeks, but I’m learning how to make a schedule to catch all the stuff I want to do. Bear with me!

6. SWIDT???