Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Fictional Tips: A Page A Day (APAD) Revisited

In one of the inaugural posts on the Nexus of Misc blog, I proposed that the three Rs of practicing any skill - including storytelling - are rigor, repetition, and ritualization.  The underlying notion is simple: to become good at something takes more than raw aptitude or inborn talent (though either can make the road a whole lot smoother).  In the end, though, you have to travel that road to get where you want to go.

This can often be easier said than done.  A penchant for procrastination is, I've found, something that almost everyone is born with.  Whether it's a term paper for a class, an article to be published in a scholarly journal, a short story, or an illustration, often times the hardest part about getting work done is getting yourself to sit down and actually plod your way through it.  The good folks at Writing Excuses offered the term "BICHOK" as advice for the itinerant writer: Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard.

My approach adapts the same principle to some of the progress benchmarks that writers like Stephen King swear by.  APAD, or a page a day, espouses an incremental approach to completing your creative (or even non-creative) undertaking, by 1) breaking it up into per-day-sized pieces and 2) most importantly, taking on each of those pieces day after day until the work is complete.

My original APAD post was intended as a call to action, but ironically, that post would be the last on the Nexus for almost a year!  Hardly practicing what I preached, as far as blogging goes.  Since then, I've tried to separate the Nexus's overly ambitious topic coverage into more clearly delineated niches, with Fictional Matters inheriting the posts focusing on writing and the creative arts.   I wanted to repeat that call to action, but this time couple it with an overt commitment on my part.  It has been my goal this month to begin providing new content on Fictional Matters, Watches to Wear, and Goods to Buy every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and to continue those scheduled updates into November, even as I take on NaNoWriMo 2011.

If you have large projects to write like a thesis paper or novel, a book or anthology to edit, or (the current occupant of my creative desk space) a comic book to pen, using the principle of APAD can help you to make it more manageable and to position yourself to make steady progress by minimizing the opportunities to procrastinate.  Give APAD a try, and if you do, be sure to tell me how it works for you by leaving a comment below.  Whether it works or fails, I'm interested in learning how it goes!

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