Charted.

2004-08-27 - 9:15 a.m.

I've impulsively signed up for Critters.org, which is an online critique group for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers. The allure - and the source of my fear - of this group is that they're pretty strict about participation. They require users to submit at least one critique/constructive criticism of someone's story a week. The critiques are only supposed to be around 200-1000 words (more or less) with a target/average of around 500, which isn't that long, so it's definitely do-able. I just happen to have a habit of forgetting to do things...

Which leads me to my wackiest exploit yet, which is to make a "Task Board" for myself. Last night I was droning on to Pookie about how if he needs structure, he really should get about setting up his own structure, because the world isn't about to do that for him. As with many things I drone on about, this was something I'm happy to expand on, but not so happy to actually do...

So, I now have a weekly task board for my writing and editing responsibilities. The plan is to pretend that my work day doesn't actually end at 4pm when I leave the office...it ends at 6pm when all of my work is done. So, after work, I go home, and I look at my task chart for the week. If I haven't completed everything on the chart, I can't do anything fun. But, when I do finish everything on the chart, I get to go home early.

God. I can't believe I've made myself a chart. Do normal people do this?

If anyone asks, I'll say I read it in a start-your-own-business book (which is a complete and utter lie, because I haven't yet read a start-your-own-business book).

Cheers,

The Magus

previous - next