Do you map out your writing for the year?

[SimonDoom]

I admit: I'm a big overthinker. I waste tons of time planning things and then ignoring my plans. I have a lot of unfinished stories and I have a calendar for the year showing when I intend to finish and publish which stories for which month. The odds are I will publish some of them on schedule, but also that I'll spontaneously come up with new stories that disrupt my schedule.

Anybody else like that? Or do you just write as you go, one story at a time?

 

[shakna]

I write whatever feels most fun at the time. Forcing the writing doesn't really work for me.
This does mean that I've got a half-dozen ongoing series, and sometimes they don't get touched for a month, before the next part appears. And sometimes in-between new things appear.

I do sometimes plan a deadline if it's for a contest, but I usually miss those.

So... Zero scheduling. But I don't think I've ever had just one thing on the go, at once.

 

[MrPixel]

Not at all. My writing is a product of inspiration and emotion. When inspired and I have the time, I write. When inspired and I don't have the time, I write anyway. Somehow it all doesn't happen based on a calendar.

Writing on a schedule or under deadlines is a job. I joined a 12-step program to quit that bad habit nearly 10 years ago.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I don't plan on which story will publish when, yet I do have over a one hundred that I started or just typed in a blurb explaining to myself what I was thinking at the time. When I get to them is when I get to them. I don't plan head. I had way too much of that most of my life at work. When I retired, I just leaned back and said...

"I'll get to it, when I get to it."

I just had a new one go up this morning that I started as something completely different. Of course it kinda fit in with what I was thinking at the time I looked at it again, so it got a finish the way I didn't plan on.

I'm currently working on one that has taken a left turn into right field. We'll see where it winds up.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I plan nothing. I write nearly every day, these days more privately than for publication, but I usually have only two or three stories on the go at any one time, all of which are side projects from something else.

I rarely enter contests because I can't abide the deadline - I amazed myself last year getting my Mickey Spillane piece finished on time. I read it again last night, and it's one of those stories where I say, " Did I actually write that?"

 

[PennameWombat]

I think over which of the contests and events I feel like entering over the year. Even so, I’ve switched out the actual story I’ve entered when my original story just didn’t gel and I have another, appropriate idea that firms up better. But that’s really just keeping the deadlines in mind. Yeah, deadlines exist. But they force me to hew to a schedule. In the case of my Valentine’s Day entry, my story didn’t do so well because I ran into the deadline yet entered it anyway.

But I don’t otherwise map out my writing in detail. If something hits and it’s compelling (to me, at least) I’ll do it.

 

[MsNatalie99]

I do with everything else, but never my writing. It's one of the few things I get to do for fun, and among the very few parts of my day that isn't planned out for me.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I do, and there is no point to it, the plan always goes up in smoke. I'm still working on a story I planned to submit to the Pink Orchid event in February.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I have a general idea of some things I'd like to do in the longer run, but I've never mapped out a whole year. A month, maybe six weeks is about the limit of how far I'd truly plan any of this.

 

[NotWise]

I don't make New Years resolutions, and I don't plan my writing for the year. Either one is like intentionally setting myself up for failure.

 

[8letters]

My goal every year is to publish four stories, and every year I publish one or two.

In the past, I've not planned what I was going to write. I'd start a story, get an idea for a second story and work on it for a while, go back to the first story and finish it, and then start work on the second story. Or sometimes I'd publish the second story and then go back to first story. Or I'd shelve the first story and start on a third story. Right now, I've got an inventory of partially-written stories that I life, and I'm planning on finishing them in a particular order. I'm going to alternate "on brand" stories with more experimental stories. We'll see if I stick to that plan.

 

[Omenainen]

Definitely no mapping of anything

I am also an overthinker, but in less structured way.

 

[KeithD]

Everything I have on my plate goes on a project status list. Since most is published to the market, that list is more about the publishing phase status of stories/books than about publishing them to Literotica. Everything is on that list, marked by where it is in the progression line: write/review/edit/cleanup/publish. I have a separate New Story color-coded list that lists everything that's gone to publishing in the market and then to the various Web site I eventually post them to so that I know what has been published when/where. About half a million words/year flow through this process, so I have to be careful about what is where.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

I admit: I'm a big overthinker. I waste tons of time planning things and then ignoring my plans. I have a lot of unfinished stories and I have a calendar for the year showing when I intend to finish and publish which stories for which month. The odds are I will publish some of them on schedule, but also that I'll spontaneously come up with new stories that disrupt my schedule.

Anybody else like that? Or do you just write as you go, one story at a time?

Well, my first story was a spontaneous response to someone else's writing. I had no plans at the start of this year to write a 5-part 100,000 word sex story.

Now that I have I'm winging it again with HOT AND FUZZY, an 8-part story that covers 8 days ...ish.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

I write whatever feels most fun at the time. Forcing the writing doesn't really work for me.
This does mean that I've got a half-dozen ongoing series, and sometimes they don't get touched for a month, before the next part appears. And sometimes in-between new things appear.

I do sometimes plan a deadline if it's for a contest, but I usually miss those.

So... Zero scheduling. But I don't think I've ever had just one thing on the go, at once.

I did have that one big thing.

I've never done 100,000 pages in one month before like that and it was amazing getting it all done.

 

[yowser]

I'm a compulsive non-planner.

 

[SamScribble]

I admit: I'm a big overthinker. I waste tons of time planning things and then ignoring my plans. I have a lot of unfinished stories and I have a calendar for the year showing when I intend to finish and publish which stories for which month. The odds are I will publish some of them on schedule, but also that I'll spontaneously come up with new stories that disrupt my schedule.

Anybody else like that? Or do you just write as you go, one story at a time?

Some people, Simon, have far too much time on their hands. Just sayin'

 

[shakna]

I did have that one big thing.

I've never done 100,000 pages in one month before like that and it was amazing getting it all done.

The relief from reaching a deadline is pretty amazing. Not a feeling I'd seek out, but staring at all those words going "Did I really manage to pull that off?" is a decent high. Nicely done.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

No. Except for the one or two times per year when I plan to enter a contest and therefore have a deadline forced upon me, I write when I feel like it. My priority at the moment is to try and finish a story I started in 2012 and, prior to this week, last worked on a year ago. With any luck I may finish it next week. After that, who knows?

 

[TruthwithaTwist]

I do tend to plan to write for the big contests, and like to submit about 3-4 days before the contest starts - mostly just to get the most views during the contest run. So, in that sense, I do plan out the year a bit. I've just started some non-contest stories, which I'll plan out the timing a bit more. Shooting for a new chapter every 3-4 weeks.

 

[stickygirl]

I have enough problem planning meals for the next week, never mind stories, so no My stories are always of the moment so to burden myself with yet another deadline hurdle would kill the inspiration as surely as my mother phoning in the middle of sex.

 

[lovecraft68]

I don't even map out single stories, let alone a plan for the year

 

[DouglasFinney]

I don’t have time to think about tomorrow’s writing. I’m busy with trying to figure out what I wrote yesterday.

 

[Rustyoznail]

"Planning..."

 

[davion2308]

You are me.

I do the same in that I look at contests and schedules and I plan my stories, I do super-simple outlines, then I rush to try to get whatever project down now. I hit maybe half my goals over the year. I'd love to do 12 stories a year, once a month or so, but time and demands of my real life often get in the way.

I have a plan, though, through next year on what I'm 'writing next.'