A Day of Words and Business: The Particulars of Project Management

Hope you’re doing well! As you all know, I discussed the beginnings of system design yesterday, so today I thought I’d share a bit about “a typical day in the life” with an emphasis on project workflow.

I started out by jumping on Twitter while waking up. It’s usually enough to knock the cobwebs off the brain and allow me to align what I’ll be working on. When I’ve latched onto a project, this happens with minimal effort. Today, I’d continue to work on the Elder Mysteries to be found in Echo of Dead Leaves. I’m close to wrapping those up–maybe a week out if I’m not interrupted.

The thing is, I’m usually interrupted some time during the week. It’s not a bad thing. It’s just a part of business. While emails and texts and all that is fantastic and an important part of the workday, nothing can replace phone calls for long distant communication. As an aside, writers like to talk. It’s probably because we spend so much time NOT talking and making things up that when we get a chance to talk, especially about stuff we’re working on…well, how can we resist?

Ed and I chatted about the Missives he’s been working on and he has some fantastic ones coming up. He’s really taking ownership of the line and I cannot overstate the overwhelming number of ideas bubbling from his noggin. If anything, I have to say no to him a lot as I must reign him in, so he’s doing his job. We knocked around what exactly I’ll be working on (and it looks like it’s between Pandora’s Box and Sigil at this point) and then discussed what he’ll be working on. All told, things are moving along swimmingly.

I spoke with Eric Avedissian about Ravaged Earth development. He’s got a LOT of supplements already written just awaiting the main book’s release. The support for this line is going to be very strong. The ones I’ve read through are great. He’s fine-tuning the intro (because I am a harsh and terrible taskmaster) and when I get it back from him, I’ll put it into preliminary layout and schedule art orders. Very close on wrapping this up and we’re all very excited about how it’s turned out.

Then I got back to the writing or what I call the work. Lyn Harm often points out all facets of what I’m doing is work (and that’s true), I only feel like I’m really doing “the work” when I am writing.

In other news, I also got invited to be on another podcast. Yeah! This was entirely thanks to Twitter! The investment of time in social media has really heightened our awareness and allows me to communicate directly with you.

I’m calling it a wrap, late night, early morning kinda day, so I hope you and yours have a pleasant one. Now go get your game on!

Until next time, I bid you, dear reader, adieu!