Stop Planning
Not entirely! But it may be time to ease up a little.
Greetings, human angels! I did a 48-hour trip to South Carolina to produce a photoshoot, and I am reveling in being home with my demonic perfect sweet attack cat. Here are this week’s recommendations followed by some stuff about working with me followed by a short essay that’s also writing advice, a veritable Pizzeria Pretzel Combo of flavors! I hope you enjoy.
Recommendations
ASMR Twix - This girl goes to spas in Japan and her sister films the treatments. That’s it. That’s the whole account. I love it and have absolutely bought their branded gua sha merchandise.
Boundary Boss by Terri Cole - I’ve recommended this before and I shall do it again. Shout out to my friend Dan for telling me about it.
Cat & Book Chat - I do exclusive audio content for my patrons on Patreon four times a month, and sometimes I make it a video. My cat joined me and trust that she looks STUNNING on camera. Also, I share some of my current and future reads.
Terminal B at LaGuardia Airport - I simply cannot stop thinking about this 5-star girl. She is proof that I will never not love a sensitive, sensible, sensuous makeover!
Butcher and Bee - One of my favorite restaurants in Charleston, S.C.
Slightly Healthier Old School Jersey Diner Cinnamon Toast: Here’s a twist on my childhood favorite. Take some culty sprouted grain Ezekiel bread. Toast it. Put a little melted butter mixed with cinnamon and maple syrup on there. Eat it. It’s good.
Work with Me
Want to write a fantastic nonfiction book treatment? Need assistance with creative unblocking so you can finally finish your novel or script? Have a kid who hates writing and really needs one-on-one support to get a school entrance essay done? For the past twenty years, I've helped folks with these issues and more.
I've coached, edited, and taught adults one-on-one as well as through comedy festivals, private companies and nonprofits. I'm available to teach adolescents and adults in person in the NYC metro area or via Zoom, phone or email. If you or your organization can cover my travel, I'm happy to coordinate out-of-town workshops and coaching. Contact saratoninnewsletter@gmail.com for rates and recommendations.
More details: During my undergraduate studies at Warren Wilson College, I tutored international ESL students in writing and composition. After college, I spent a year in the AmeriCorps program teaching 9th and 10th grade creative writing and assisting in the social studies and science classrooms. Later, I completed my masters degree in education for grades 7 through 12 at Teachers College at Columbia University. I did my student teaching through Columbia University at the Bronx High School of Science.
Now on to a sample of writing advice…
How to Get Unstuck: Stop Planning
I was raised by someone whose job was to plan: to ensure adequate allocation of resources; to cross the t’s and dot the i’s in advance of the final rollout of a product or program; and to envision potential disaster scenarios and develop response strategies. I copied the great aspects of that behavior, but I also imitated or inherited the negatives, too.
Maybe you were also raised by someone like that. Or perhaps you grew up in an environment that was itself something of an intermittent disaster. Maybe neither! Maybe both!
Perhaps you, Child of Overplanning and/or Emotional Chaos, actually rebelled as an adult by ignoring potential issues and developing tunnel vision, working ceaselessly toward a goal without looking side to side. Along the way, you likely missed some important signs and sometimes ended up with an insufficient or untenable final project.
Or perhaps, like me, you experienced the illusion of 360-degree vision, working toward covering all bases at all times, no breaks, no rest, until you collapsed from exhaustion. For all our caution and planning, people like us do not always build a better creation. Some might even say our preparatory work is really procrastination in perfectionist disguise, but I think that’s another essay.
While I continue to ease up on my desire to plan for all eventualities in the the personal, professional, spiritual and physical arenas, I realized recently that my creative life had once again become bogged down by the false belief that if I only planned for every last moment, I might be able to write something flawless and fabulous on the first try.
Here is how the planning delusion works for me: I convince myself that I can only write a first draft for a pilot, feature film or novel if I’ve first constructed a comprehensive outline along with a character/show bible, mood board, and even a soundtrack for writing the thing I’m definitely going to write just as soon as I plan this one last detail.
As a result, I get stuck in the muck of endless planning and don’t actually execute that first draft. Let us discuss why this is unhelpful.
First drafts are flawed by nature. They are meant to be imperfect. And if you don’t get to the first draft, there can be no second draft, or third draft, and so forth. The first draft is never the final draft, but the final draft will not exist without the first.
My advice to you and thus to myself is this: ease up on the planning after a certain point. Don’t eschew a plan altogether. One needs a blueprint to construct a home, at least one that stands up to the first strong breeze. But building a story is not so precise an art as building a four-bedroom center hall colonial in a suburban subdivision — or, if we’re reaching a bit higher, building the Alhambra in Spain.
Do some planning — the basics, let’s say — and then stop.
Get going on the story. Or the poem. Or the whatever.
Then, once you’ve got some material to work with, walk away. Come back later. Re-read it. Does it fit your original basic plan? If not, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Characters and adjectives and nouns and verbs and sentence structures will do what they do. Sometimes they know better than your or my Internal Project Manager.
Does the current result please you? Wonderful! Let’s not throw it out just because you weren’t psychically able to envision exactly how things would go. Perhaps your plan needs adjusting. In fact, you can now write your plan to your story.
Save that first plan. Now write an updated version of it, but don’t spend too long doing that. Get up. Stretch again. Walk or crawl or run or roll away. Come back to the story. Re-enter the story. Make more art. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Drink water now and then.
Let me know how it goes.
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“How to Get Unstuck: Stop Planning” is part of the How to Get Unstuck series, originally on Medium.
The first essay, “How to Get Unstuck: 10 Good Things” can be found here.
The second essay, “How to Get Unstuck: Chore Time!” can be found here.
The third essay, “How to Get Unstuck: Come Back” can be found here.
The fourth essay, “How to Get Unstuck: Your Other Life” can be found here.
The fifth essay, “How to Get Unstuck: Move” can be found here.
The sixth essay, “How to Get Unstuck: Write to You” can be found here.
The seventh essay, “How to Get Unstuck: Study” can be found here.
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