Planning= Laziness

The header is not a personal rule or even an exception. It's Switzerland (neutral, for the younger ones). I have actually been less goal-oriented over the past few weeks while calling it planning. It has none of the structure of an actual workflow. It's far from being reliable but it's had some unforeseen boons nonetheless.

In fact, even my usually unusable dreams have actually been game for inspiration. One particularly weird one has become the outline for a chapter or two of the YA Steampunk Fantasy novel I've been poking at for the past few years. I've always pictured this series as something straddling real-life places (the kind of places that are damn near magical in reality) and sinking into the completely surreal. Glassy metropolitan streets, quaint cafes, and suburban sprawls to remind the reader that extraordinary people come through humble places too. A bonus to me because it will involve some couch tourism, finding some hidden gems of human invention, research and mind expansion on a budget.

Which is part of the problem. I'm used to creative bursts having a sedentary quality. It's also why I've made walking at least 8 hours a week a mandatory part of my routine. However, 'planning' is something I usually pair with something more active because of its tendency to create complacency in productivity. I don't stare at a blank page and force the muse to get busy so it mostly relies on inspirational spurts rather than an active effort. It's nothing like just throwing words into the big project or even taking notes of what might work later if I make a note to try to aim for that development now. I wander away from the writing and start doodling.

It's not wholly unproductive but it can feel that way. There's a sense of ennui in looking for inspiration, oddly enough. It's a background contribution so it's less visible but it's still a backbone in the machine so I've given it credit there. However, a YouTube search for a general idea can easily lead to hours of watching videos that have nothing to do with my story goals. Hey, some off-the-road wandering can lead to inspiration but some, I have to admit, do not in the slightest.

Focus does not come easy for me. When I do find the magical all-in activity, I am single-minded to the task. Planning is a bit of a nemesis there because it actually plays the devil's advocate against my intentions, encouraging unfocused, capricious wandering. Again, I can get lucky and stumble on a focused and usable train of thought, but more often, I get the retrospective feeling of derailment.

Regret? No. Trying something new comes with rough edges and delayed productivity. However, it's a shiny new object that may become a valuable tool. Even if I never get comfortable with it, those are the lessons that stick. Things that work almost become too comfortable so we more keenly remember the things that threw wrenches in the works. Avoiding the same pitfalls is a skill too. 

I wouldn't say this planning phase was a lost cause. Not just because of the usable dream. Not even because it did give me the ability to learn to relax my rigorous workflow. It had its pitfalls, but it was more akin to a good memory of my childhood. I kind of reverted back to my teenage years with the grabbing for notebooks, doodling and bursts of zaniness. It takes on a different flavor at this stage in my life, but I felt more connected to my long-term writing goals. This was always about creating the best stories possible. Ideas like improving my craft, studying structure and grammar, looking at the market-- those can murder and discourage the natural flow if I become too obsessed with it. They aren't unimportant, but they can't be allowed to supersede the main goal. Do I want a trendy conscientious choice or do I want to dig deeper and embrace the flaws and limitations unique to my experiences? 

The answer is clear to me. Edgy isn't taboo these days and I'm cheating myself to be too safe, to be too rigidly influenced. I don't want to be the next Tolkien or, pulling from a personal favorite, the next Garth Nix. Emulating success and the connection with the story is hugely tempting, but it tells me nothing about myself to go through the motions. It doesn't validate what I really find worthwhile. It doesn't truly dig out what else might influence me.

It's in the planning where I found this more strongly. I remembered more keenly the high of webbing a story, of staging characters and plots. I found a valuable place where blurbs were easy to pluck. If you must know what I consider a great weakness, it's blurbs. Simplifying the complex is something I already do as a writer, but blurbs are an insane condensing of all of it. One to three paragraphs to try to draw someone in. Yet it's in the planning where I just scribbled down "NAME: this wayward soldier sinks into life as a gambler only to run afoul of NAME when cheating in a high stakes game." When I read back all of these short character summaries, suddenly I was finding all of these effortless ways I had already described my characters that were both distinct and containing no actual spoilers. With such simplicity, I suddenly saw a value I had forgotten, a way to sift through my intimate knowledge of the story and pluck out the juicy bits.

Suddenly, it doesn't feel so wasteful or lazy.

See, sometimes in our road to 'expertise', we try to minimize waste, become more efficient, and streamline our time. However, even if you have to look at it like a vacation from your structure and schedules and word counts, find time for it.  The more complex your story, the more time you should 'waste' on playing with it. Some people find little snippets of time to do this while they're working even. Using a notepad app on your phone to jot down ideas, for one. All the same, at some point you will have to take that jumble and comb it into a story, which will appear to be passive and simple (when we all know it's not).

I've said before that modern times really put the screws on the competition to overwork yourself harder than the next person. Creativity isn't an assembly line, it's not a neat to-do list (although it can be, depending on the medium/genre), and it's not an area that profits from a hamster wheel mentality. It's a mental exercise in flexibility and it can run dry or come gushing. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to take advantage of how it presents. It's no wonder that so many creatives juggle projects. We've gathered a sense of what state each project benefits from.

All in all, there's a real need to get defensive when someone actually sees planning as procrastinating or laziness. Even if we're not actually guilty of that, it can get under your skin. If you find it empowering to defend yourself, then look at it objectively and calmly explain the way it benefits your work. Don't be caught unaware and have to scramble for the answer. They don't have to understand, no matter how well you've thought it out. Some people are ONLY trying to get under your skin. It's perfectly fine to tell someone to fuck off when you can tell they're being bitter or condescending.

Remember, most people attribute creativity to their younger years, bailing before harsh criticism was something they truly understood. They remember every picture going on the fridge, every story being saved in a memory book. At some point, they started comparing themselves to others and never really faced the abyss of taking the blows and the determination to improve despite that.

In truth, over the past five years, I haven't really dealt with the people around me throwing that kind of negativity at me. I did wade through family and friends ridiculing what they thought of as a hobby and I also stuck it out and changed minds (and tossed out the toxic ones). My own determination had to carry me through adversity, through education, through frustration and hard realities, but at no point was any defeat fatal to my goals. At first, they too saw it as laziness so I remember how raw that guilt could be. However, my portfolio and photo albums kept growing, my plans started to come to completion, and there was no denying that I was seeing many sleepless nights and long days to meet my goals.

Plan away, at risk of being seen as lazy. Your peers know it's bullshit. Even if you can't really escape a toxic environment, keep plugging away according to what methods work. We all do self-checks to weigh whether we're procrastinating or stalling and sometimes we're guilty. Sometimes, we. Are. Planning.