It’s April 2. It’s Monday. It’s the day after a holiday and vacation from school, and it’s the start of the second quarter of the year. Today is the ultimate day for a fresh start on new projects!

I always get over-zealous at the start of a new quarter, but spring gets me especially energized. There’s so much I want to accomplish before the school year ends in June, and I’m relying on my habit system to get me there.

Even though I haven’t been producing as much writing over the past month, I have been doing a lot of thinking about what comes next. I’m going back to my trio of commitments: a big project, a smaller project, and my pillar projects (journal, blog, newsletter, DIY MFA posts).

The Big Project: Novel

In April and May, I’ll be doing research for my novel-in-progress, which I’ve re-set in 1930s California during the eugenics craze. I’m itching to start drafting, but I’ve learned enough about my own process to recognize that it has to wait until I have a clearer picture of my setting and the historical waypoints. For the next two months, I will be:

• Reading 6-7 books about the time period and the eugenics movement
• Doing online research in newspapers, academic journals, and other source material
• Refining my characters

The habits that make it possible: I’ll be doing the reading during my normal reading time; I’ll just have to put a hold on my TBR list for awhile. The online research will mostly take place during lunch breaks at school. I’ll be getting to know my characters on my commutes. Here comes the embarrassing part: I’m planning to record myself answering questions about a given character for at least ten minutes a day while driving. Yes, I’ll be talking to myself in the car. But it’s usable working time! 

The Small Project: Micro-Memoir

Writing a novel is a marathon. It’s thousands of small steps before there’s even the potential for a reward. I believe that it’s important to do simultaneous short-form writing: a published essay or praised blog post gives me stamina for the long haul. I’m breaking this project into two parts. First, I’m doing two weeks of posting here on the blog every weekday. (I’m five days in, and it feels great!) Then, I’m going to take the next two weeks to write daily micro-memoirs, about 700-800 words apiece. For the following four weeks, I’ll work on polishing, lengthening, and submitting anything that seems worthy.

The habits that make it possible: Getting up early on weekdays and finding more weekend time to write. This is a lot of work for my small project, but I know I can accomplish it because I’m not actively writing the novel right now. When it’s time to start drafting (I’m aiming for June 1), this project will be coming to an end.

The Pillars

I’m not going to forsake my mainstays. I’ll be journaling daily (about 5 minutes), writing my posts for DIY MFA and my newsletter, The Perspective Post (fitting in on weekends and the occasional school break). The blog will be getting more posts than ever, thanks to the small project!

The habits that make it possible: The pillar projects are always easy to get done, because my expectations of them are so clear. Turn in my DIY MFA posts on time; send one newsletter a month, usually on the second Tuesday; journal every day.

Today I was granted a little extra time: we had a 2-hour delay to kick off the spring trimester (nice to ease back in, but I’m so sick of the snow!) and I was able to hit the ground running with writing AND exercise in the two hours before my kids woke up.

What are your spring projects and plans?