Doing the Next Right Thing

Once upon a time, during what feels like another lifetime ago, I took my masters’ of science in documentary filmmaking and turned it into a marketing communications job. As part of that job, the entire marketing communications team took a project management certification training course. (Side note – this course was not nearly as fun as the Serious Writer courses, which you should try if you haven’t.)

The goal of the project management course was to teach our marcomm team useful strategies and techniques for managing complicated communications projects.

Ten years later, I no longer have a team of people around me but I still have multiple moving parts and pieces to manage and deadlines to meet in my writing life.

Writing middle grade is very similar to writing for other audiences in that you must write well. Writing middle grade is different than writing for other audiences because the voice must be authentic and relatable for a reader who is in a constant state of flux. It is harder to draw on life experiences while you’re writing for this reader, so you must research. To do research you must plan.

If you are like me, the process of planning is not a straight line from point a to point b. It can get, well, twisty. I research, I have ideas, I add those ideas to a to-do list and then I write and research some more.

I find myself thinking about that old project management class when I’m planning and writing and feel overwhelmed by all the to-do’s on my list. My lists can grow exponentially each day, especially when I’m trying to research one project while writing another.

Rework this chapter. Finish that blog. Read these books. Query your manuscripts. Plan your social media posts. Oh yeah, and build your website and tweet the tweets.

Whenever there are multiple things, and all of them are important, how do we do them all? 

Project management classes are fantastic and worth taking. But I need to tell you that the tool I use most isn’t one that I learned in class. It’s what I learned to do when I ran into opposition, or felt overwhelmed, or it was Tuesday.

Whenever there are multiple things, pick the next right thing, then do that one.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Then pick the next next right thing and do it.

Repeat.

If you’re not sure what the next right thing is, reach out to your writer community and ask.

If you do not have a writer community, start now. The Almost an Author tribe is warm and friendly and has a number of resources for people like you and me.

My next right thing is to finish the last three chapters of my current WIP. What’s yours? How do you juggle multiple priorities? Tell us in the comments below.

Kell McKinney earned a B.A. in journalism from the University of Oklahoma and an M.S. in documentary studies from the University of North Texas. She’s a part-time copywriter, double-time mom and wife, and spends every free minute writing and/or hunting for her car keys. Connect with her on Twitter @Kell_McK or kellmckinney.com.