Project Albatross
Day 0 – Sunday, September 25 – 1,093 reviews to go – A statement of intention
Literary conventions are great for inspiration, but few of them lead to scrapping plans for a novel.
As I’m writing this, it’s barely ten o’clock and I’m wiped out — the happy and expected result of a weekend spend at Congrès Boréal, the annual French-Canadian conference for writers, reviewers and readers of science-fiction, fantasy and horror literature. It’s my home convention — I haven’t missed a single one since 1995 and it’s in some way part of my own “third place” away from family and work. Since the event is filled with trusted friends, it’s a place where I can bounce ideas off people who understand where I’m coming from.
I joked to a few people that I was going to use them for “rubber ducky project management” and did exactly that. Here’s the situation I outlined, in two complementary points:
- I often write a novel in November. Nothing fancy, nothing worth publishing — just a creative outlet in which I create a novel in thirty days without self-editing or excessive worries about the material being good enough. While I have been kicking around an idea for this year’s novel for the past few months, I don’t feel as if it’s fully cooked yet. I have a theme, characters, a rough beginning, the opening and closing lines, an idea of the areas I want to explore and plenty of clippings — but I don’t have the spark needed to spend thirty days on writing the entire thing. I could force myself in the next thirty-some days to sit down, outline, break down the structure and hammer an outline into shape, but that could go spectacularly wrong and result in a full scratch come November. Meanwhile…
- …I have an albatross hanging around my neck: Roughly 1,093 unwritten film reviews for movies I saw in 2020 and then 2023. For good reasons (2020: global pandemic; 2023: house fire leading to lengthy renovations), I was out of writing energy those two years and so my quick-and-rough viewing notes for the films I saw during that time have never been transformed into a finished capsule review. I have many unfinished projects, but this one definitely weighs on me: An unfinished 2020 prevents me from publishing later reviews, and 2023 is something I’ve been meaning to finish for a while but haven’t done so — in large part because there’s 2020 nagging at me. This is also having a knock-down effect on everything else, including fiction writing: Why should I spend any time on the novel when there’s something else to do?
Having run both of those ideas by my rubber ducky audiences only reinforced something I was toying with prior to the convention:
I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year. I am not writing a novel this year.
I hate to write it, but there’s the deal: As of tomorrow, September 23, I will start working to get rid of that albatross. I will finish those 1,093 reviews (plus any other new film seen during that time) and by January, I will be free of that weight. I would ideally like to finish it on December 30th so that I can ring in the new year without that nagging feeling (and then spend January-March editing five years’ worth of reviews) but let’s be realistic: This would mean writing eleven reviews per day, which is not really a sustainable rate over a hundred days.
Still, I have to start somewhere. As of tomorrow: No zero days.
Day 1 – Monday, September 23 – 1,083 reviews to go (-10) – Estimated Completion Date (ECD): January 8.
Fair beginning. Sat down and wrote, and that’s all there is to it. Trying not think too hard about chipping away at one percent of the total, but at least it’s one percent down.
Day 2 – Tuesday, September 24 – 1,077 reviews to go (-6). ECD: January 9
Yikes — not great day, and I’m already falling behind. I may have an excuse (I had 90 minutes less due to a non-profit organization meeting), but the truth is that this will not be easy…
Day 3 – Wednesday, September 25 – 1,066 reviews to go (-11) – ECD: January 9
Well, this is more like it: eleven reviews completed, which is slightly more than the maintenance average. Ideally, I’d be able to sock away a few more reviews every day to make up for any interruptions that are sure to happen at some point, but I’ll take maintenance over losing ground on any given day.
Day 4 – Thursday, September 26 – 1,054 reviews to go (-12) – ECD: January 8
Twelve reviews down (four of them easy, as they were films I’d seen in the past month) despite taking two hours off this evening to attend a vernissage, and my overall motivation is pretty good right now. Gaining ground on the ETC feels good! I’d like to sock away a double-sized twenty-reviews day or two this weekend, but let’s be cautious about being too cocky.
Day 5 – Friday, September 27 – 1,042 reviews to go (-12) – ECD: January 8
A relaxed Friday evening, and twelve reviews down. Twelve is a nice number for a weekday. I like twelve. I should aim for twelve. Twelve will help me create a buffer against less-inspired days. Tomorrow will be too busy to be a great day for reviewing, but let’s see if we can do another twelve.
Day 6 – Saturday, September 28 – 1,030 reviews to go (-12) – ECD: January 8
Another 12-review day — not bad, and this despite a late start. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a double-load day.
Day 7 – Sunday, September 29 – 1,010 reviews to go (-20) – ECD: January 7
Whew — a good day since I could devote more time to it. One milestone: At my current average of twelve reviews per day (which I’m unlikely to sustain, but let me take in a piece of good news), I’m now scheduled to finish on December 21st. It won’t happen (the more conservative Estimated Time to Completion in the daily title is based on completing 10 reviews per day), but it’s encouraging.
Day 8 – Monday, September 30 – 987 reviews to go (-23) – ECD: January 6
Wow! As expected, this has been a very productive three-day weekend. ETC went down by a day, which is the whole point of double-load days. It even went better than listed above, since I completed two more September 2024 reviews that weren’t counted in my 2020/2023 backlog. Two milestones today: Cracking the sub-1000 barrier, and completing reviews for October 2023. If things go well, I may be able to wrap two more months in the next two days. I’m even going to sleep early tonight.
Day 9 – Tuesday, October 1 – 976 reviews to go (-11) – ECD: January 6
New month, new milestone: Finished the reviews for March 2020, a particularly meaningful month. Tomorrow may not be a good day considering that I will less computer time yet have two (longer) book reviews to write to wrap up reviews for September 2024.
As a bonus: I keep referring to this effort being about transforming my notes into complete reviews. What does that look like? Here’s an example from today, about Nine Months (1996). First, the spur-of-the-moment notes with intact typos:
(On TV, March 2020)New baby comedy from the popint fo view of the helpless (hapless) father. Julianne Moore in a early cutie role – in fact, with Joan Cusak who get a two-for-one cute redhead bonus. Hugh Grant well-used. Sitl, the film has problems striking a consistent toen between the universality of its premise and the wild comic extremes of some sequencesx. The lead character is remarkably clueless even for comic effect. My suspension of disbelief snapped a few times, from character action to simple physics (you can’t suddenly be hit by a swing)
Now here’s the completed review after a bit of research, contextualization, word-smithing and further thoughts (still subject to further editing prior to upload on the web site):
(On TV, March 2020) Writer-director Chris Columbus’ assignment on Nine Month was simple: turn in a slightly hysterical portrayal of a commitment-phobe young man in the process of becoming a father. Whether he succeeded is debatable. There are certainly good arguments in favour: Hugh Grant is in full befuddled floppy-raised butterfly-blinking mode here, almost sending up his own early-career persona. If you care about cutie redheads, there’s a young and soft Julianne Moore, plus Joan Cusak as an unexpected bonus. A strong supporting cast includes Tom Arnold, Jeff Goldblum and Robin Williams going an Eastern-European schtick. The film is luminously shot in beautiful San Francisco, and has a few amusing comic moments. Alas, it’s not all good, and what’s not good arguably overwhelms the rest. Columbus has significant problems striking an even tone between the universality of its premise and the wild comic extremes of some sequences. Much of the character drama that should emerge organically seems instead contrived through characters who make dumb choices because the script requires it to prolong the tension. Even for comic effects, the protagonist seems remarkably clueless. Suspension of disbelief snaps a few times, whether it’s form perplexing character actions, or even simple physics. (No, you can’t be suddenly hit in the face by a swing you’re casually pushing.) Nine Months tries hard, a probably too hard: it tries to take two directions at once and ends up confused about what it was trying to do.
Tomorrow we dive back into the depths of early-pandemic movie-binging with April 2020, a month in which I still have a staggering 110 reviews to write — the most of any month left to complete, albeit closely followed by May 2020’s 105 reviews to complete.
Day 10 – Wednesday, October 2 – 964 reviews to go (-12) – ECD: January 5
While I wasn’t able to finish the book reviews needed to wrap up September 2024, I did write my dozen reviews (even if I finished far too late) and, as a reward for my pacing so far, saw my expected completion date tick down one day to January 5. Let’s keep this up!
Day 11 – Thursday, October 3 – 954 reviews to go (-10) – ECD: January 5
Meet my daily minimum objective of ten reviews today rather than the dozen I’m usually aiming for, but that’s not a defeat — I also wrote two lengthy book reviews and thus completed September 2024. Of course, now I have to start October 2024…