FFs #38: Something's Gotta Give
Here's my strategy for clearing space to publish my next book.
In This Issue
Burn out. I see Substack experts talking about it all the time. As in, don’t set a pace for yourself that’s so onerous you burn out and quit. Ever mindful of that, I’ve slowed the pace a couple of times this year. It’s sort of like down-shifting.
It’s that time again.
How Did I Get Myself in This Corner?
If you had told me fourteen months ago I’d soon be keeping up a schedule of writing one newsletter PLUS essentially one book chapter every week, I would have thought you’d just stepped off the outer rim of a carousel torqued up to maximum speed.
I’m proud of actually doing that—keeping up that pace. And I’m proud to be able to say I have written—wait, let me check—yikes! This is my ONE HUNDREDTH post.
I think I deserve a breather.
Not because I’m burned out, which I’m not. Nope, I’ve been merrily chugging along, working through the ideas and drafts I’ve been stacking up since 2009, and letting new ideas just bubble up when they like.
But here’s the problem. I’ve been writing all these chapters for multiple mini-books, but I haven’t had the time to actually get any of them published. I keep looking for ways to cut back—like editing posts from old blogs or Medium—but that hasn’t worked as well as I had hoped. Even editing takes time.
How I Plan to Get Out of This Corner
So here’s the new strategy. I’m going to keep publishing Fractal Fridays every week, but the excerpts will come from posts I published last year in the Listening for Guidance series, which a whole lot of my subscribers have never seen anyhow.
And I’m going to commit, here and now, to resist the urge to edit them.
That series is the material I’m looking to turn into a book. I started working on the book project last fall. It’s 99% done. It just needs the final summary and a call-to-action that offers a lead magnet.
Okay, well, yes. I haven’t yet created a lead magnet for this project. And creating a lead magnet is not a trivial thing.
And then it needs to be published. Which is something I’ve only read about and never actually attempted.
So maybe let’s go with 90% done.
For months now, one of my parts keeps telling myself that getting this book out the door is top priority, but another part isn’t listening. So we’ll see if this new strategy will get things rolling. I’ll let you know how it’s going next week.
What’s Your Strategy Been?
How have you avoided burning out? Or carved out time for an important project? I’d love to hear your ideas!
Excerpt: Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary
A story-in-a-story that shows why my attic floor is groaning under the weight of a dozen-odd boxes of paper.
[This is the fifth article in my latest series—The Wisdom in Our Breadcrumbs: A Trail Lit Mostly with Love.]
She was just 18 when she wrote about broad-shouldered, full-chested Uncle Darrell and the heartbreak of discovering her childhood hero was a fraud. Her story taught me a profound lesson about the difference between lies and truth. And the profound importance of writing things down.
They say when a person dies, the world loses a library. For me, losing my mother and her mother at the age of 16 meant those libraries closed before I was even aware of how useful they might have been.
That aspect of loss didn’t hit me for a few years. Finally out of college, there were so many life decisions to be made. So many questions.
But nothing came in response. So many lessons, so many stories. Just gone.
What was her early life like? What had happened in the family way back when that caused certain relationships to be strained? Why didn’t Grandpa and Uncle Paul get along?
I would have loved to have the chance to ask Mom—Zoanne Maureen Caskey Hines—about her childhood, beyond the handful of facts she had leaked as I grew up.
Fortunately, no one else had wanted the photos and letters and steno notebooks full of shorthand none of us is able to read. My sister and cousins were happy to leave the questions of family history to me. No one challenged my request for whatever written or printed evidence was available as the grown-ups cleared out after the funerals.
One big cardboard box held as much of the family library as I was going to get. To a documentation fanatic like me, it may as well have been filled with gold doubloons…
[Click here to read the rest.]
In honor of my sons—both of whom are Eagle Scouts—Happy National American Eagle Day!
If you know someone who needs to hear what I have to say, please share or restack.
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