On January 1st, I set the following goals to finish the manuscript:
A minimum of 500 kigo/keyword entries
8 essays (including an introduction and a conclusion)
35 recipes
I finished the goal of the recipes section fairly early on; based on my planner, I finished those sometime in February. While that section will need some editing (for example, measurement abbreviations are not standardized), that section has been drafted for a while.
I got to the 500-entry minimum in mid-May. One of the things that helped was the Finally Finished journal, which launched just after my birthday; I bought myself a copy on its release day. The Finally Finished journal is a daily planner that runs for 90 days. For each day, you write down your goal. Yes, you write it down every day to keep things top-of-mind. You also write down your goal for the month. Then you write down three tasks per day that will move you toward that goal. The planner comes with gold stars, and you get one for every task you finish. (There are more components to the journal, but I’m going to save those details for a longer review that will go on the 9 Square Press YouTube channel later this summer.) Using the planner really helped me sharpen my focus and break the remaining project into smaller tasks. Figuring out manageable steps is my biggest challenge, but this journal seems like it was really designed for people like me. I even wrote an additional 54 kigo/keyword entries during the month of May, exceeding my goal!
I mentioned in January that I was going to also do some restructuring of the manuscript, though I didn’t know what that would entail. Well, I had a big revelation in May as well, and while that restructuring is still in progress, it’s going well, and I’m confident that I’ve found the book’s final form. With that restructuring came a change with the essays. I finished drafting 2 of the 4 remaining. However, when I outlined the last two, I felt that while the topics were interesting, there wasn’t enough substance for a standalone essay. These topics have been incorporated into the book’s introduction. I also ended up cutting an essay I’d drafted back in 2024. It simply no longer fit the rest of the book.
In terms of my formatting goals, I did set and implement some basic consistency, though I didn’t get too far into the weeds, because the bulk of that work will be done during the final design process. But it really is good for my morale to have the manuscript looking nice and not an amalgamation of three different fonts from various copied and pasted writing sessions. I also created a structure for the final front matter. The one thing I did not do was start building the index, but that’s such a final-stage thing, it probably wasn’t worth putting on the list at the time.
So as far as my January goals go, I’ve basically finished them . . . but I don’t feel that the manuscript is quite done yet. I still feel there are some gaps in my kigo/keyword entries that I would like to fill in, if possible. I still need to finish the final restructuring. There are also five weeks left in my Finally Finished journal and I am going to continue working daily to get this manuscript to the state I want it to be before it goes to my first beta reader.
Here are my goals for the next 5 weeks:
Complete the manuscript reorganization process;
Write an additional 196 kigo/keyword entries, getting me to 750;
Complete all publication credits for previously published poems;
Complete the reference list for all my research;
Make the preliminary index (no page numbers)
The goal was to finish the manuscript before November 7th, and I’m happy to report I’m well on track to meet that deadline. Here’s to the next 5 weeks!