I often run into the problem of having a list of a ton of writing projects I want to tackle and then I get paralyzed and don’t write anything.
The list of writing projects I have in mind is very long.
1. Continuing To Create Content For Austin James Blog
Since 2013 I’ve been dreaming of being a full time blogger, and I know that reaching that goal will require a lot of pain, especially now as I am very deep in the blogging valley of despair.
I’m questioning myself, questioning the direction of the blog, questioning everything. I know, theoretically, this is all a normal part of the blogging game, but it really sucks when you are going through it. It’s at this point that your mind wanders to those other writing projects–maybe it’s even time to start another blog, ya know? Maybe this wasn’t the right blog to start with!
2. Finish That Dang Novel I’ve Been Fiddling With For Years
We all have a novel we started, right? We knew that writing a novel would be hard…but we didn’t know it would be this hard. Anyway, I went back to my novel and it’s hard, which is probably the reason I have come to this point where I’m unsure of how to proceed in my writing.
3. Update The Old Theme Park Guidebook I Wrote
In 2017, I self-published my first book, a guidebook to Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, which is my home theme park. To this day I still make a sale or two per month, even though I put on the Amazon description that the book is too old to be helpful in planning a Busch Gardens trip and that I just left it available for Busch Gardens nerds that want to read through an old guidebook.
This, of course, makes me think I need to update the guidebook to the current year and market it (which I never did in 2017 and it was still making sales regularly). But doing this would abandon current writing projects, and everybody knows it’s not good to keep leaving projects half done with nothing complete.
4. Make Corrections To The Public Domain Book I Published On Amazon
I won’t go into the fundamentals of publishing public domain content on Amazon (in my opinion it is not worth it), but let’s just say it was a passion project. It is a passion project that is 99% complete and then I stopped at the goal line. Why do I do this to myself!
I impulsively hit the “publish” button in my Amazon Kindle publishing profile and immediately regretted it because I thought Amazon was going to reject the manuscript, but then it didn’t and published it which is great but I didn’t include a clickable table of contents, which would be very important for navigation in the book since it’s a collection of old, hard-to-find articles on a subject I’m passionate about.
Also, I need to promote it and I was thinking of just launching a free WordPress blog and publish all the articles in the book for people to read for free and including links all over the place for the book. This wasn’t really a project I had in mind to make a lot of money that would get me to the $10k per month mark, it would hardly move the needle in that regard, but I put a lot of effort into the book and wouldn’t mind to make something from it. If that’s going to happen, I need to fix the table of contents, make a better cover (current cover sucks), and then promote the book. I would be jumping for joy if I make even $20 per month from it. Again, it’s a passion project.
5. Write A Tampa Bay Day Trip Guidebook
I always thought it was stupid to let other people come to your city and then make money playing tourist. That’s why I’ve been wanting to write this book for a long time and self-publish it to Amazon. I’ve been all over the Tampa Bay area and could write a better guidebook than any professional travel writer or social media influencer.
Years ago, I started writing this book and then in my true fashion abandoned it for unknown reasons. Do I go back to it now?
6. Launch My Social Work Blog
I’ve advocated on this blog to launch a blog that covers what you do for your day job, even if it sounds boring. Because the store of knowledge you have about your day job is insane, even if you don’t realize it.
I had my eye on January 1, 2027 as the date to launch this blog. But the closer I get to that date and after doing the initial planning I’m questioning how the heck I will find the time to appropriately launch the blog–because this is the BIG one. This is the blog that is gonna get me over the the top in my dreams of being a full time blogger. The design for Austin James Blog is barebones, but the design for the social work blog is going to look real professional and elegant. It is going to consume almost all of my writing time, which begs the question: should I abandon current writing projects AGAIN to start a new project? I have a bad pattern of abandoning projects and I’m worried I’m falling victim to it again even if it is for the purpose of launching my “flagship” blog.
So What Do I Do?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to STOP ABANDONING WRITING PROJECTS before starting the next one.
So right now, I believe I can manage two projects 1.) continuing to write 3x per week here on Austin James Blog 2.) finish my novel.
Then at the risk of stretching myself thin, I think I can get the 99% passion project to 100% with about one week of part-time work outside of my day job. It seems like this would be a good move psychologically–Look! I finished something!
I don’t know what the correct answer for you is. Maybe you are like me and have a ton of abandoned projects that should have been finished. The only writing project I have been consistent with in 2026 is this blog. I keep “circling back” to other projects and nothing ever gets 100% complete.
If I’m being honest, it’s probably because whenever a project starts to feel hard, I move onto another project. Sad!