![\"Building](\"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Building-Inventory.png\")
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I\u2019m taking on a new writing project – posting once a day on this blog this year – and, naturally, the first thing I open when i start a writing project – after Word or Ecto, to write the text – is Microsoft Excel, to track what I\u2019m doing. Maybe that\u2019s a sign of my so-called \u201cleft brain analytical tendencies\u201d (NOTE: the left brained \/ right brained nonsense is a MYTH<\/a>, used here for entertainment value only); after all, Quentin Tarantino once said \u201cyou can\u2019t write poetry on a computer\u201d and I doubt he spins up Excel on his yellow notepads. But a lot of successful cartoonists I know, like Bill Holbrook of Kevin and Kell<\/a>, got their start on their most successful projects by getting an inventory – a month or two of backlog that they could use to prevent themselves from getting behind, and the only way I know to get that far ahead is to actually track what you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a useful exercise so far. I found about half dozen old blog posts that never got posted (some quite stale now) and found many other ideas popping to mind just by writing them down. I also realized the limits of my Excel-fu, as the nice diagrams I generate for my Nanowrimo progress are actually the outcome of a lot of careful tweaking which I can\u2019t easily replicate quickly.<\/p>\n But the exercise is really helpful. Just like all the other things in my life I\u2019ve gotten more disciplined about tracking – my Nanowrimo progress, my word count, my short stories, my TODOs, my office piles – I\u2019ve found great benefits come quickly, and it brings clarity, focus \u2026 and a great feeling of relief when you hit Save and are one more unit ahead of the onrushing wolf.<\/p>\n -the Centaur<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m taking on a new writing project – posting once a day on this blog this year – and, naturally, the first thing I open when i start a writing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,1,202],"tags":[4,5],"class_list":["post-2916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-challenges","category-uncategorized","category-writing","tag-dragon-writers","tag-we-call-it-living","ratio-2-1","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3816,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916\/revisions\/3816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Screenshot](\"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Screenshot-2016-01-03-15.24.54.png\")
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