How Far Ahead Do You Plan?

Not sure I’d call this a journal, per se. Just a little thing I thought it’d be fun to talk about.

It’s a pertinent question. How far ahead does one plan for creative endeavors and the like? Obviously, I can only speak for me. And the answer is varied. I plan differently for different things and circumstances can change this. For example. The last eight or so episodes of Bulletoon – with the exception of the manga spotlights – were planned several months in advance. And several of the upcoming episodes, once the show comes back from hiatus, will be very much the same. Some episodes I’ve had planned for something like a year.

Then there are reviews. Obviously, those aren’t planned ahead of time. Or, rather, they weren’t. Now that I’m changing the way I handle reviews and such, I may be able to start planning well ahead of time. We’ll see what I do. There are a lot of shows running, right this very minute, that I could probably cover. But some I may have to wait on because I doubt I’ll be able to get to them all, right away. There’s Dr. STONE, Black Clover, the recently concluded Kimetsu no Yaiba, and so many more. Plus Bokuben and MHA.

Other posts? Eh. It depends. For example. Easily my most successful post on the main site – Books vs. Alternative Media – was very in-the-moment. Because it was inspired by the negligent comments of a man who’s not worth the breath it’d take to say his name aloud, let alone the muscle usage to type it. Meanwhile, some of my other editorial posts were planned at least a week ahead of time. But sometimes I do just… write one. I’m just suddenly hit by inspiration and boom. There it is.

But what about original work? Well, here’s some perspective for you. Burning Sky has been in development for something like two years, now. We actually completed the first draft of the first book in that series over a year ago. And we took nearly a year to get the story bible and so-on completed for it. We’ve also got something like three or four other fully planned projects that have been on our back burner for years. Plus several newer ideas.

PROJECT ACADEMIA, meanwhile, is a very spur-of-the-moment thing for me, and I fully expect it to start coming out sooner than later. I actually just finished the rough outline and I honestly just want to get to the writing part, while I still have the fire to do it. So I’d say you may even be able to expect that to start coming out before Burning Sky, at this point (more on that in a separate post, later).

I’ve always been someone who’s liked planning. Sometimes I think I’m more in love with that process than the actual writing part. Just figuring out the cause-and-effect of a story, how A leads to B and all the moving parts that make up the whole thing. It’s always a lot of fun. What can I say?