Career Planning, or Sailing Blind

© Krzysztof Ostoja-helczynski | Dreamstime Stock Photos

In the day job, there are supervisions and appraisals. Evaluations and training needs assessments. Recently I've been looking at coporate, team and personal goals. Short, medium and long term. I can look at strategies, plans and peg my own aspirations to them. I can work with my line manager, area manager and team to set realistic, appropriate goals. Beyond that, I can career plan and set where I want to be in a few years' time.

 I feel the need for some writing career planning, but who do I work with? I need direction and an action plan.

"Are you okay, you look sad," asked Husband the other day. I wasn't sad, precisely, just preoccupied with trying to work out something I didn't appear to be able to work out... I couldn't figure out what to do and how to get there.

Yes, I know I could just write, but I feel like that old adage, "if one does not know for which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable." I've had a long break from writing seriously, and my writing confidence has suffered and I no longer know for sure what I can do.

Should I finish the big blockbuster or the abandoned Third Book? Should I try something completely different, or turn my attention to short stories? I feel like I can't afford to get this wrong, but have no idea how to work through it to get it right.

But maybe - unpalateable thought - there is no right or wrong thing and everything must take its chance.

But, man, I need a plan.

Empty Time

I'm starting a new book, and it's going very slowly. For one thing, I don't really know what it's about yet. Well, that is, I do know what it's about—I have the heroine and the hero, and I've got the premise, and that's all written down in a blurb which I've given my agent and which she's approved. And I know that the theme of the book is knowing yourself and being accepted, about realising that even good people make mistakes, and more specifically it's about a woman who is trying to make up for something she did wrong many years ago.

So I know the big things. But I don't know the little things. I haven't got snatches of dialogue, or a picture in my head of the heroine's home. I don't know most of the characters' names and I'm not really sure what's going to happen on a page-by-page basis.

Discovering these things takes time. I discovered yesterday, for example, that my heroine keeps stashes of chocolate in her house in case her friends come round with a crisis. But that secretly, she comfort-eats it herself when she's alone. The details of her life, and her friends' lives, will emerge as I get the story down into real words, rather than big ideas.

But discovering these things takes more than just writing the real words. It takes lots of staring into space. Walks, and baths, and those five minutes lying in bed while the house is quiet. Empty time. Unfortunately, I've also got a new paperback out which means that every free minute is taken up with promotion, or also obsessively checking Amazon to see if it's selling. My husband isn't working, which is nice because I like seeing him, but is difficult because he assumes that unless I'm typing, I'm free for a conversation about guitars and/or whether we have any cheese. My son's funded nursery hours are stopped for Easter, which is also nice because we get more time together, but I have absolutely zero chance of thinking about anything but him (and Top Gear, and Lego) when he's around.

So I have been cranky. Craving empty time. And not able to appreciate the full time I do have.

Fortunately, next week is my birthday. And as my present, we are going to the seaside for a week. For five days, we'll all be together and I won't be working; it will be pure, guilt-free, family holiday time. And then, on the day after my birthday, my husband and son will go back home and leave me in the cottage on my own, for two days.

Five whole days of full time. And two whole days of empty time.

I can't wait.

How do you snatch your empty, thinking time?