(This is a one-week experiment in using the 80 20 principle--to find out what it's all about or to join in, just go back to the post for August 2 and then scroll forward to all the posts with big numbers in them).
The video is done! By now it may sound like it should be some kind of Academy Award Winning production, when in fact it's just a three minute talk about creating great characters rather than stereotypes, but I was using an editing system I had to learn.
I did also write a sample creativity column.
The other task was to do more research for the report I'm writing on crowdfunding (that's where people pledge a certain amount toward your creative project before you actually do it). And that's where I learned today's lesson:
It doesn't have to be perfect!
My natural impulse when I write a book or report is to want it to be as comprehensive as possible. I'd put out a Google Alert on crowd funding and have been surprised by how much new material there is about it on the internet--enough to keep me researching for another couple of weeks.
But when I thought about it today, I realized that what people want from e-reports and e-books is the most important facts--especially information they can act on now. They don't want a 300 page ebook with every possible permutation of the subject.
So I'm calling a halt to the research and getting on with completing the report.
Sometimes stretching the research phase is a way to avoid actually writing, of course, but I don't think that's the case in this instance. In this case it was more about perfectionism, which is an equally dangerous project-killer!
Maybe you can relate to this. Is there a project that you've either avoided starting because you feared you couldn't do it perfectly? Or one in which you've stuck too long to one phase of it, trying to get that perfect before moving on?
If so, repeat after me: "It aint' gotta be perfect!"
Thanks to the folks have have mailed me about their next steps: Robin is doing an outline, Nick is continuing work on his site/blog, my anonymous wight-loss correspondent has been replacing some of her high-carbohydrate food with low-carb, high-protein meals.
For tomorrow my tasks are:
* Finish the rest of the sales pages for my November Las Vegas workshops, then we will be able to start enrolling people
* Submit my novel to one additional publisher (one of the two to whom I submitted the proposal earlier in this experiment emailed to say they no longer publish fiction--which wasn't mentioned on their web site)
* Write a second sample creativity column
If you're participating, let me know how you're doing and anything you're learning from the experience.
