I have a piece of advice that I’m writing mostly for myself here: stop thinking so big.
Start small.
Start with the achievable and work your way up.
I have been planning this novel-length audio production, writing words, making scripts, composing music, mixing sounds, and—nothing firm has been done yet.
The big project is simply too overwhelming.
Oh sure, I see the forest, but I can’t seem to plant the trees. It all feels like I’m jumping into a new plan, a new skill, a new concept without knowing if any of it will even work—and more importantly if something critical will fail. And the result is paralysis incarnate.
Something smaller has to come first.
In my case, maybe instead of trying to make a novel, I record some audio blogs first. Then maybe after I do that, I work on making a few one-pager short stories into encapsulated one-off samples of what I’m hoping to create on a larger scale. And then, maybe something else, and something else after that, and maybe… eventually, the real thing will fall into place.
I’m sure many great people have achieved great things in one fell swoop… but the rest of us may need to build up our stamina first.
Terms FROm this POSt
- blog
- I admit, I am pretty old. And I started posting formatted words and photos online before the word blog had even entered the common lexicon. Most people work in the medium of social platforms these days, but being both a product of my time and a stickler for content ownership and control, I still lean into and promote the idea that a personal content managed general purpose website is the beating heart of the internet I once knew and loved. I use blogging software, but I don’t think of these sites like blogs, more like living documents that happen to look an awful lot like blogs.
- short story
- Usually averaging about five thousand to ten thousand words, a work of short fiction is an exploration of a big self-contained idea in a small space, leaning into clear and intentional writing with an eye for literary economy.
