If you didn't even make it in time to have New Financial Year's Resolutions, do it now. Sketch out your next year and make me feel more sensible for how I'm doing it.

I did a rough year plan last December or perhaps really I had a thought about making a rough plan. I definitely helped others with theirs and they definitely tried to help me back, but I resisted. Mostly through being a bit focused on the month, the week, the day, the hour and occasionally the minute plan. But also because a year seemed a bloody big thing.

The year has got shorter now we're in May, but I'm not specifically planning 2014, I'm looking 12-18 months ahead now. And the reason I think I can do this is that my work has changed. I'm much more tied to a calendar now: I just did a gig at a festival and that was on a certain day, it was arranged many months before. It used to be that everything I did was task-based in that I'd get some work, I'd do it, I'd go straight on to the next. There were usually deadlines but they were always short ones and the quicker I could turn something around, the better.

With festivals and events taking over, I feel like I've got these tentpoles ahead of me. I can't do much in early October, for instance. Knowing that now, here in May, is weird but I like it. And whenever you find something you like, enjoy it, exploit it a bit. I've already used that October tentpole to say I can't do this other particular thing until December. I know that the two events need to be separated by a fair time, I know how long it will take me to finish up one and get the other going, I know how much time that will leave me for the short-term work I rather live for.

When did I get this organised? Today. And the thing with being organised around tentpoles in your calendar – I'm just making up terms now, aren't I? – is that the constraints are liberating. Knowing that I've just this week done one event means I can wipe that from my head and concentrate on one I've got for 31 May and then I can forget that until the next one in August.

I'm losing the anxious uncertainty I had when people would ask if I were available for something and I'd always say yes regardless of how hard or sometimes impossible that would make my month.

I keep saying this. As writers, we create characters and we set rules – our blind watchmaker can't suddenly see just because it solves a plot problem – and setting ourselves just a few rules, a few plans, helps.

Go plot out your next 12-18 months, would you?