For me, the distinction isn't necessarily the planning.

Why should you listen to me?

I'm not the most successful writer in my field. By most measures, I'm still getting started.

If you're making a living writing fiction, you're ahead of me in so many ways. I'm not sure it makes sense to change your process for mine.

On the other hand, if you've been trying resolutions and never quite getting to the goal, my method may be what gets you to hit the Publish button (or its equivalent for your own personal goals). Or maybe it will just provide some inspiration you can use to build your own thing.

What I mean by plan

Image by Kirill from Pixabay

With plans, I'm not necessarily talking about something that's fundamentally more elaborate as a starting place. My plan for 2026 on these pens is “write and publish shorts.” The individual shorts themselves will get more actual planning than the 2026 plan did.

The rigidity of resolutions

A resolution is often something like “go to the gym every day” or “don't eat junk food,” etc. I think the planning isn't so much the issue. There's often a lot of planning like:

• This is the gym I want
• This is when I'll go each day
• This is what I need to buy, etc.

Image by Kirill from Pixabay

The moment the gym streak breaks, the resolution is ruined because we don't have time machines. We can tell ourselves that we'll renegotiate the parameters but it generally doesn't work because of human nature. The thing that kept us going when we really didn't want to was the streak. When the streak is gone, we lose the motivation.

With my plans, the motivation is completing the individual effort. I want to tell that story or record that song or release the project. If I skip a day, it's no big deal because working on it daily was never part of the thing. If I end up doing 50% of the project in one day (as I can with a short!), it's great because it gets me closer to working on the next thing.

Start now, not later

I also find that starting anything on a set day in the future tends to really do one in. When I was working on ... the project I ended up completing in November probably, I was talking about it as if it was October's project but I started it in September. Basically, as soon as I had enough of a plan to work on it, I used the planning momentum and excitement to get going.

Applying that to what I'm doing right now ... I started doing the work on that as soon as I realized I wanted to do it. I started writing on Short 1 two days ago. It's unlikely that story will have the Publish button pushed in 2025 but I'm sure as heck not waiting until the new year to work on it. 😹

The finitude of this kind of plan

One of the upsides to this kind of “planning” is that a specific effort finishes whenever its done. There is an endpoint for each story (get it published) and, when that goal is finished, the main effort is finished too. Of course, we live in a capitalist hellscape so that's not quite true. I gotta keep promoting the thing but I can roll that promotional effort into what I'm already doing promotion wise.

And I can work on the next story or work on the next plan. It's always fresh. It's not going to the gym each day until I either die or break my streak. The next thing doesn't have to be prose fiction either. It can be write a song or do an AV project.

How does it work out?

Is this kind of planning more successful than resolutions? I don't know. I'm not sure they're doing the same thing. This type of planning is the only way I've ever successfully changed my life but I'm not using the concept to get swole or whatever. I'm not sure it would even work for that because the equivalent would be “I plan to lift weights sometimes” or whatever.

On the other hand, I can (and do) start one any time I want to change something.

As far as that goes, it's working out pretty well. It might help you too!

#Writing #Resolutions #Plans

Image by Alessio from Pixabay

I read a fair amount of erotica, some of it historical. I ran into The Horn Book: A Girl's Guide to the Knowledge of Good and Evil recently in an article or blog post and it sounded interesting. Despite its translation to English being firmly in the public domain, the only options I could find to get it involved paying money to shadowy groups who publish public domain works for ... variable amounts of money. I try to avoid paying less than scrupulous people for things that are in the public domain but sometimes it's unavoidable.

The Horn Book (at least the bits I've read so far) is a dialogue between two lovers. The more experienced man and the married woman who's having an affair with him. She asks him to teach her all the things about sex that she doesn't already know.

From a modern ear, it's pretty annoying. “Oh, Claude, even though we've fucked in every conceivable way thousands of times, I don't know anything, please teach me.” That level of annoying. Claud explains some anatomical things which, if I understood correctly, are definitely not true and very funny. Although, as an American, it exceeded my sex ed.

At that point in the story, Claude insists that they use only technical terms for body parts because if they're going to be so bold as to do these things to each other, then surely there's no reason not to.

And that's why I'm writing about it.

I've heard variations on that theme for years. “You should only use the scientifically correct terms for body parts!” Usually outside of erotica but sometimes in it too. There's a degree of irony in Claude saying it in The Horn Book. Even in the passage where he's complaining about the use of euphemisms, he's actually mostly using euphemisms straight when he's supposedly not.

There are some sexual euphemisms I'd just as soon never hear again but, most of the time, the euphemisms aren't there (in smut or dirty talk) to occlude meaning or shy away from uncomfortable topics, as Claude insists. The euphemisms you'd use in an erotica scene or when playing with partners aren't the ones you'd use to keep “tender ears” from understanding your meaning.

Instead, those euphemistic words and terms are there to provide variety and express different terms of meaning.

“I thought of you and now my penis is hard,” might be hilarious in the right context. It's not specifically the “right” way to say that. If pressed, I think even the author and the translator of The Horn Book would have to confess to that. Otherwise, both of them would have reverted to more technical language in that passage.

I've occasionally heard (from people I assume don't read erotica) that technical terms should be used in erotica (and, one imagines, romance too). When you use your foot to press the accelerator on your automobile and use your hand to activate the indicators, I'll take you more seriously on that.

There's a time and a place for technical language. Even I use it sometimes in my writing. Using the full nuance of the language isn't wrong, though. Unless you're into it that way. In which case, write those dirty, dirty words. 😈

#Erotica #Smut #Writing