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.

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