See What You’re Missing?

Here’s the message I just sent out to my Nagger and Reader volunteers. It is not too late! If this sounds good, drop me a comment, message or email!

Okay, guys and gals…

 

First off, thank you for subjecting yourselves to the abominably boringly named “May Project.” I promise that if this is successful, we’ll come up with a much cooler name by the beginning of June. I have already vetoed my father’s suggestion, “How about the ‘June Project’?”

 

So, I’m lumping both my Naggers and my Readers into one email so that I can be off the computer before it turns Tuesday on the east coast and all the new iTunes stuff goes up. I need not the temptation for new music.

 

Naggers!

 

Your job, as I mentioned on the May Project blog (I have mentioned ad nauseam that I’m blogging this whole verdammt thing on blackflak.wordpress.com, right?) is to get in my face about my maintaining a reasonable page count. The way I conceive of this is to keep it friendly and supportive… “Hey, did you get your x pages done tonight?” or “How many pages are you so far for this week?” This prevents me from, y’know, forgetting to write or thinking that no one will notice if I don’t get anything done. If the week starts to wind down and (in your Nagger estimation) I’m falling behind… well, that’s when you can start getting in my face. Y’know, nicely but firmly.

 

Why weekly? That’s because I need the flexibility. As much as I’d like to guarantee that I’m going to write every day, I can’t. Some nights I’m up until ten trying to get the boys to bed. Some days I’m working from five am to four pm. Some nights I have to watch Lost. But hopefully, by the end of the day (by which I actually mean “by the end of the week”) it all balances out. Also, I figure it’s a long enough period of time to babysit a grown man before starting to get a little sick of it. Hopefully after a few months, we’ll cycle around and you can nag me again.

 

I’m starting the week tomorrow, after thinking about it. Tuesday night is my go-to-bed early night, so it’s a good night to get my bearings. That leaves the much-more-productive Monday night to scramble to finish. If this doesn’t work, we might bump it to Mon-Sun, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Anyway, with that in mind, I’ve produced the following schedule:

 

5/4 – 5/10: 10 pages. Designated nagger: Shawna Block

5/11 – 5/17: 15 pages. Designated nagger: Laura Nadler

5/18 – 5/24: 20 pages. Designated nagger: Ed Einhorn

5/25 – 5/31: 25 pages. Designated nagger: Michael Payne

 

That takes us to the end of May. Hopefully I’ll have a new complement of June Naggers to take over then.

 

Readers!

 

You can wake up now, I’m done talking to the Naggers. Unless you’re both, and then I’m, uh… not.

 

I’m going to just start up a big lumpy email list of y’all, which I will use with impunity every Tuesday morning to send you a nice big coredump of that week’s writing. Tomorrow, just for fun, you’re going to get the prologue which I wrote satisfactorily in January. All that is required of you is that you read it… you know, the way people who read stuff read things. Not the way I read things people send to me, which is that method of reading something where you don’t actually read it. Then, if you can find it in your heart, drop me a line telling me what you thought of it. No line edits or anything, just a reader’s response. It doesn’t have to be positive, though that helps. If you’ve got a question, please ask. If you aren’t sure what’s what, tell me what wasn’t clear. Y’know… feedback.

 

While your reactions and comments will certainly help me to stay on the right track narratively, the real focus here is to be an audience. If I think people are reading it and enjoying it, then I’m going to feel a lot more motivated to keep at it.

 

And, of course, if at any time you feel you no longer want to be a Reader, just tell me. There is no stigma or shame. I will not curse your firstborn. Really. Promise.

 

So. That’s the haps. Thunderbirds are go.

 

Thanks again, all of you!

 

Doug

There. Two posts today, and one of them actually useful.