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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Thrall, A. Trevor, author. | Moran, Brian, 1959- author. | Lennington, Michael, 1958- author.
Title: The 12 week year for writers : a comprehensive guide to getting your writing done / A. Trevor Thrall with Brian Moran and Michael Lennington.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2021]
Identifiers: LCCN 2021027287 (print) | LCCN 2021027288 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119817437 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119812371 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119812364 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Writing. | Authorship.
Classification: LCC P211 .T497 2021 (print) | LCC P211 (ebook) | DDC808.02–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027287
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027288
Cover design: Paul Mccarthy
Preface
I am excited to have written, at last, a book about writing. I have worked to help my students get their writing done for many years. My goal now is to share what I've learned with as broad an audience as possible. I happen to be a professor of political science, but the system I use to organize and manage my writing can be applied to any kind of writing you might do.
The 12 Week Year, created by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington, is designed to help people focus on the small number of key activities that will help them achieve their most important goals. After discovering the system, I applied it to my research and writing with tremendous results. In nearly twenty years since adopting the 12 Week Year system, I have written millions of words on all sorts of subjects. I've written books, journal and magazine articles, book chapters, memos, op-eds and blog posts, newsletters, policy analyses, book reviews, conference papers, public lectures, and all sorts of other things. Most importantly, the 12 Week Year allowed me to get all this writing done while maintaining a happy marriage, helping raise three great kids, and getting entangled in any number of time-consuming side hustles along the way.
This book will show you how to use the 12 Week Year to become a more productive writer. But before you get started, I want to be clear: you do not need to be an academic or a full-time writer to make use of this system. I am paid to sit around and write for a living. Unless you are in the same position, you should not imagine that you need to write so much to be successful. The fundamental promise of the book is this: No matter where you want your writing to take you, the 12 Week Year will help you get there, even if you're not sure yet just where there is.
I certainly did not wind up where I thought I would be. Hooked by science fiction and fantasy at an early age, I was probably 12 or 13 when I decided I wanted to become a writer. When I was 14, I sent my first and only submission to the science fiction magazine, Analog. It was an overwrought poem about outer space, as I recall. I can still remember how excited I was by the rejection letter I received two months later. The editors kindly took the time to encourage me to keep trying and to submit my work again in the future. It was enough to make me feel like I really could be a writer someday. I kept the rejection letter far longer than I kept the poem.
As so often happens in life, however, I wound up following a very different path from what I had imagined as a kid. I never lost my obsession with science fiction and fantasy, but in college I gained a fascination with political science and learned that I was far better at analytical writing than I was at writing fiction. So instead of a novelist, I became an academic. I still have plans to write a novel or two someday, and when I do, you can bet I will use the 12 Week Year to help me do it.
Whether you are a budding playwright, a graduate student writing a thesis, an aspiring novelist, or a full-time writer, the 12 Week Year can help you become more productive on a consistent basis. With this new writing system in place, you will find yourself getting more writing done, more quickly, with less stress than before.
The 12 Week Year for Writers will enable you to:
Clarify your writing vision and increase the energy and motivation you bring to your writing
Connect your daily actions with your vision via a 12 Week Plan for your writing
Focus on only the most important tactics necessary to reach your writing goals
Create a healthy sense of urgency and motivation by shortening your planning horizon to twelve weeks
Reduce your stress about hitting goals by increasing the predictability and consistency of your writing
Build confidence in your ability to accomplish whatever writing projects you can imagine
Identify and resolve problems in your writing more quickly by reviewing your performance on a weekly basis
Reduce your anxiety by clearly identifying when it is time to write and when it is not time to write
Improve your work/life/writing balance by ensuring that your weekly schedule provides adequate time for each
Keep your projects on track by providing a weekly routine that reinforces your ability to get your writing done
Acknowledgments
I need to start by thanking Michael Lennington, coauthor of The 12 Week Year, for more than two decades of friendship and inspiration. This book never would have happened if he had not sent me a binder full of the materials that would eventually become known as the 12 Week Year just when I needed it most.
I also need to thank two decades worth of undergraduate and graduate students for enduring both my plentiful writing assignments as well as my advice about how to get their writing done. Special thanks go to the graduate students with whom I have written everything from conference papers to edited volumes. Interacting with students not only fueled my love of teaching and talking about writing, but it taught me more about the craft than I have learned from any book.
No book would be ready
