I've mentioned before that I've been writing a book about how our grandmothers and great-grandmothers experienced the years beyond age 50, and I'm glad to say that I recently finished the manuscript. I began the research for this book in (gulp!) 2007. For a variety of reasons, the work proceeded in fits and starts. I've written other books, but this one had me stuck. Not only was life getting in the way, as it often does when you're working on a big project, but I struggled to wrap my head around the complexities I found in women’s stories. The challenges--how to organize the book, sift through reams of great research material, interpret women's experiences, and do justice to their lives--seduced and frustrated me for the better part of two decades. A dozen times, I closed the files for months or even years.

I often work with clients who are tackling huge projects like this one. I've been thinking a lot about how I finally buckled down to write. I got a big boost when my one of the historians in my professional association asked me to give a talk about this research at the 2023 association's annual meeting. That organization, the Southern Association for Women Historians, has nurtured me intellectually and professionally for thirty years. Thinking it was time to either put up or shut up about the project, I agreed. I spent the last half of 2023 crafting a talk about three of the inspiring women I had discovered in the archives.

A 40-minute talk is not the same as a book, but writing the talk got me excited about telling a wider audience about what I learned about growing older from the women's diaries, letters, memoirs, and oral history interviews. So I finally wrote the darned book. Between January 2024 and August 2025, I managed to write and edit a draft I feel pretty good about.

I did it not by pursuing my goal of writing a book, but by developing some systems for getting the work done. As writer James C. Clear says in his book Atomic Habits, "Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results." He goes on to say that "Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress." He reminds us that winners and losers have the same goals. It's not the goal that drives the outcome; it's the system.[1]

Each year I become more convinced that systems are really the key to tackling big projects. My system had three parts. First, there was--to paraphrase the great Stephen King--the dedication to putting my "butt in the writing chair."[2] That meant that I had to sit down regularly to write without waiting for inspiration or the right mood. I put three two-hours writing blocks in my calendar for every single week, and most of the time I succeeded in showing up and doing the work. It also meant shutting down other apps and resisting the siren cry of doing more internet research so that I could focus on writing. Some days I struggled and didn't get much done. Other days, I wrote much longer than three hours. But showing up paid off, and the pages accumulated.

By the time I finished the conference talk, I had finally figured out a plan for organizing the book by themes that emerged in women's experiences of growing older, and I had decided that each chapter would use a mini-biography of several women to highlight a theme. But even with an organizational plan, I felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of material. How would I ever choose which women to highlight? I had stacks of paper files AND hundreds of digital notecards with information on over 200 women.

This time it was another fine writer, Anne Lamott, who rescued me by suggesting a system. In her book Bird by Bird, she describes a childhood event when her younger brother was struggling to write a school report on birds. Her father advised, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”[3] I just needed to take it chapter by chapter and woman by woman.

For each chapter, I selected four or five women. I started by writing each woman's mini-biography. Think of each one as a square for a beautiful, intricate quilt.

When I had all the bios for a chapter written, I sat down to stitch them together like the pieces of a quilt. I added introductions, conclusions, and connecting tissue like historical background and interpretation. Think of these pieces as the borders and connecting strips that contain the quilt squares. Sometimes at that stage, I found that a woman's story didn't match the other quilt pieces as well as I thought. I removed some stories and replaced them with bios that better fit into the patchwork. Using this system, I moved bio by bio, chapter by chapter until I had five chapters.

By mid-summer, I had a manuscript that had some promise, but it was "lumpy and bumpy" to quote another historian friend. I'm a pretty good editor, and I occasionally do contract editing for clients, but this time I was too close to my work to see it clearly. I needed help. I hired an editor friend to do a developmental edit. A developmental edit is a thorough review of a manuscript with a focus on overall structure and style, voice, and audience. My friend immediately identified the lumps and bumps. Some chapters were too long. Some of the women's stories were still out of place in a particular chapter. One woman's story straddled almost every theme in the book, and we decided that she needed her own chapter. In some places, my language was too academic. In other places, my writing was clear as mud. My editor friend helped me figure out how to craft a better manuscript.

So that was my system:

· Butt in chair. In other words, show up regularly to do the work.

· Take it bird by bird--one piece at a time.

· Assemble the pieces and rearrange as necessary.

· Ask for help. A fresh pair of eyes is a priceless resource.

If you're working on a big goal, you need to build the systems that will work for you. For years I had a big goal--writing the book. But the goal was not enough. Until I built AND implemented a set of systems, I made no progress.

Most of you aren't writing a book. And even if you are, my system may not be the right one for you. But developing the system that works for you is key.

What goal has eluded you? Is it because you haven't put systems in place to support your progress? What systems do you need to build?

And if you're wondering, I'm now in that extremely frustrating stage of trying to place the book with the right publisher. Unlike my previous books, this is not an academic book intended to be read by historians and graduate students, but a trade book that I hope will interest a wider audience. (There are 55 million women over age 50 in this country, and each year another 2 million women turn 50, so I figure the book might appeal to at least a few thousand folks.) I'll keep you posted on my progress. Meanwhile, for a little preview of what I have to say, you can read my 2023 talk here. Or read some blog posts that feature some of the women in the book here:

· Big Rock in My Way

· Happy Because I Made It That Way

· Life Is About Navigating Change

[1] James C. Clear, Atomic Habits (New York: Penguin Random House, 2018).

[2] I first came across this advice in King's superb book called On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (New York: Scribner's, 2000). It's been quoted and paraphrased all over the place since then.

[3] Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (New York: Penguin Random House, 1994).