Status of project phoenix and the importance of planning

Where's Project Phoenix (large, or 'giant' were words too wieldy) now that we're ten days in the month of February and I'm 18 days away from the final targeted date for conclusion? There's some good news and there's some decent news.

The good news is I've planned out and outlined most of the 'steal this idea' posts, and each post can probably go with 15 minute of reading through and editing. Which means one of those days it'll be 12 -16 posts out in one day, and two to three days like that and we're done. The estimated time spent has been overreached but that was only expected.

As for the main engineering posts for the site, 25 out of the 30 posts have been planned and outline like hell. So it's likely there's going to be 30 minutes per essay to get the good stuff out. Maybe longer, but not too much so because the content and the intention is there, it just needs tying up.

Which reminds me, I've never really planned my essays before. I write as I go with a general sense of where to end up eventually, and find my way there. That strategy has served me all these years, but you cannot reuse the same strategy to plan and write down all kinds of essays it turns out. Specially if the nature of the topic is more exploratory and 'out there', you need to have your thoughts clearly laid out to make exactly the point you intend to, otherwise there's not much motivation to follow through a vaguely defined idea. Filling blanks is easier and more fun than hunting those tiny mushrooms they use the pigs for, and by creating outlines and drafts, I'm making my future life easier.

As I've written before, if this planning strategy works out, then there's no stopping me. I will plan the crap out of essays, my novels, even non-fictions books! And write them! What has stopped me from being productive in more recent years is not the desire to write, but not how to go about writing, and what to write exactly. Because writing requires lots and lots of thinking and planning, which doesn't align with 'okay so I need to write for the next twenty minutes, as much as I can'. If however I can break down scenes, stories, dialogs into 20 minute-writeable fragments then that's pure win, my novels and books will be written half-hour at a time!

So, how's project phoenix doing? It's hard to say, because nothing's been put on the paper yet. But when things do get on the paper, the pages will start filling up fast. Much like a startup's business. So we'll see how successful this startup gets!