What should you work on now/next?

I’ve been doing some very fun sessions recently with creative people (mostly, though not exclusively, writers) who are stuck.

They don’t know which of their many projects they should be working on.

They crank out a Substack post every few weeks. They open Scrivener and make a few tweaks to their novel every once in a while. They have so many half-finished projects and un-begun ideas that they truly don’t know what to work on. They bounce from one project to the next, and are unable to settle down and actually finish anything.

I’ve been helping them figure out what to prioritize, what to put on pause for later, and what to take off the list completely. It’s really fun hearing about what everyone is working on—people have some fantastic ideas! But it’s even more fun helping them get unstuck and back to work with renewed focus and energy. (See the email below for proof of concept).

If you are stuck in indecision about how to move forward with a hobby, project, or creative career, here are some questions to ask yourself. These questions can help people working on any kind of creative project, even if it’s not your full-time job (maybe especially if it’s not your full-time job)!

1) First, is there something on your list that you know (be honest!) you just don’t WANT to work on?

Take it off the list. I’m not kidding. When it comes to creative projects that a) no one is paying us to do and b) have no deadline and no one is waiting for them, the only thing that can get us to work on these is intrinsic motivation. If that is gone, for whatever project, just take it off the list. Move the file off your desktop. Put the materials into a drawer and close it.

This is true for me, too! You may have noticed I don’t do social media for my coaching business. Would it be good for business? Yes. Do I want to do it? No. So I just took it off the list. Doesn’t mean I’ll never do social media for decision coaching, but I know that these days I never, ever feel like making a promotional Instagram post, and that I’m not going to do it. So away it goes!

Don’t let your old projects sit there on your to-do list making you feel guilty and taking up psychic energy!

2) What’s the smallest, fastest thing you would consider a win?

Getting a short story published, even if you don’t get paid? Writing a review of a local theater performance, even if it’s on spec? Getting the owner of your local coffee shop to let you put up a few of your photos on the wall?

This thing doesn’t have to be your dream project. I’m specifically saying to steer away from things like “getting a book deal” or “find representation for my large-scale art installations.” Rather, I’m saying that positive reinforcement is really hard to come by in long-term creative projects, and a small win can help give you the validation you need to keep you going. And it means you can check one project off the list!

3) What will sell?

About six months ago, I coached a really delightful writer who was working on numerous book projects. Her problem wasn’t sitting down and getting words on the page—she wrote for three hours every day! It was that she kept bouncing from one novel to the next, never finishing any of them. She wanted my help in choosing which book idea to focus on.

She told me later that she’d expected me to ask her which idea she was most passionate about. But instead, I asked her “Which one do you think will SELL?”

Writing books, or any other long-term creative project is hard. Most of us are doing it because we want to share our ideas with the world. Selling a book (or a painting, or someone commissioning your choreography) is the best kind of encouragement there is. It can kickstart a career. It gives you confidence in your work. It gives you money!

Which one of the numerous creative projects on your list is the most marketable? Make that your number one priority.

4) What will give you the most positive reinforcement?

Several of the people I’ve talked to about this are sitting on projects that are 95% done. My question to them is:

What’s close enough to being finished that you can get it out the door—to an agent, to a manager, to a gallery owner, to a speculative fiction journal, to a newspaper—this week?

Do that first. If you’re creative enough to have multiple projects on the go, it’s a good strategy to have them in all different stages: draft, editing, under consideration by a gatekeeper. It keeps things interesting, it keep the process moving along, and it means that if something gets rejected—well, you have all these other projects in the pipeline.

Don’t let “putting it out into the world” be the part of the project you never get to. Push one project over the finish line and see what happens!