In my NaNoWriMo book I repeatedly explain the need to have steps for progression. It’s simply a part of good planning for habits, something we rarely do.

Case in point, I haven’t done this for writing. I had a flurry of writing, accomplished a lot, but now I’m at this point, stuck because I don’t know what to do next. That should have been conceived and written down somewhere long ago. But this is natural, especially in the “pushing a task to mastery” portion of a mature habit.

Lydia suggested that not only should this list be somewhere written down, but it should also be listed in order of importance. And it may very well be that some tasks, as they come up, go to the very front. It should function like a flow chart, preventing this paralysis that I’m in write now.

For example, I’ll list out what I want to accomplish while writing.

-Improve writing by lowering the gap between intending to do a work writing article and the fear that prevents me from actually starting
-Pitching the articles I have ideas for professionally
-Working on weak points of writing - for me it’s inputting research and reportage that makes, for me, a professionally written article
-Learning how to pitch with skill, pegging current events to sell the pitch

A few points - a lot of these things can and should be broken up. It would be great, for example, to get to the point that the time it takes to do an article as I do them now lowers. So - one sentence of work writing, then a paragraph, then half of a task, then a full article per day, rough draft, to a full article completed with editing.

The other point is that there are always going to be things that get in the way, especially in this task. If I have an article commissioned, that will have to go to the top of the list.

The problem is how to organize this with clarity.