The Bite Sized Chunk
How do you deal with a project that’s just enormously, overwhelmingly big?
You just do the next thing, is all.
This applies whether the overwhelmingly big thing in question is a novel, or a series of novels, or the unrelenting maintenance required by a house (houses, y’all), or dealing with how big and scary the world is.
I’m telling myself this because I feel very overwhelmed by everything currently—January, and the book I am editing, and the chaos of home repairs and cleaning up after myself, and how much stuff I really ought to get rid of, and pet care, and pet care in January, and we did mention how big and scary the world is. And how little control I have over any of it, and how much more there always seems to be to do.
Which is why I’m thinking about bite-sized chunks. This edit I am dealing with is one of the biggest and most complicated edits in my career, for one of the most ambitious books of my career, and the last 150 pages is so very rough and I have to take a whole plot thread out… well anyway, it’s so much work.
So much work it makes me want to hide my head under a pillow and cry.
But it’s work that has to be done, so I am setting myself a goal of editing one chapter, about 18-20 pages, a day until it is done. That’s a manageable chunk, even of intensive work requiring a lot of focus and concentration, and it gives me a place to stop, which is vital to my mental health. Some days I might decide to do two chapters, even, but I don’t have to, and that’s vital.
What big scary thing in your life might be easier to face if you considered it in terms of bite-sized chunks, or what you can do in half an hour, or any other small, concrete interval? I feel like I can exercise for half an hour, for example. Or spend an hour working with the horses. Or practice guitar for three songs. Or vacuum the kitchen.
That’s manageable, right?
To quote the brilliant liz climo, “Jeremy! Sensible bites!”
