Packers History in 100 Plays - Project Update 3

The last month and a half has been interesting.

When I launched this book project, I laid out a few conditions that would count as acceptable delays for getting to the end of a first draft. All were things like unexpected travel, family emergencies, or illness.

I didn’t reasonably think that any of the three would happen. But, instead, all three happened. Since the middle of May, I’ve burned a week helping a friend move from San Antonio, Texas to Columbus, Georgia, spent most of another week on a family emergency, and gotten sick enough that I really haven’t slept more than 3-4 hours in a night in a week and a half.

That’s a long way of saying I’m not going to hit my deadline by the end of the month. I’m making progress, but it’s not going to get there.

As of this writing, I’ve finished about 80% of my research and about 15% of the overall writing. I’ve been building the rhythm back up over the past few days, especially on research stuff, but I’ve been a bit stuck on the writing front due to time constraints. I think getting something done by the end of July is doable, though, so here’s my proposal for this update.

Let’s go double or nothing.

I’m not going to be done by the end of June, but let’s say I have to have a draft of Packers History in 100 Plays done by the end of July, or I’ll double my donation to the Minnesota Vikings Foundation. Instead of $100 for failure, it’ll be $200.

Sound fair? I think so. Fair enough, at least.

The upside to all this is that research has been an absolute blast. When I generated the list of 100 plays I wanted to work on, I figured I know quite a bit about quite a few of them, and that’s been true, but my research into even very well known plays has yielded some interesting results. It’s been extremely satisfying, especially as I’ve gone deeper and deeper into the era of plays where video is available. It’s fun to go back and parse out little details of famous plays that don’t immediately seem obvious. And on top of that, watching video of the Packers from the 1970s and 1980s is always enjoyable. It was before I was born (or old enough to be aware of football), but it still feels warmly familiar.

Now, I think I’ve got some writing to do.