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The Problem With Multi-Tasking...
Jul. 2nd, 2012 05:31 pmIt's a nice feeling, getting your writing 'career' kick-started back into action, but it's not without its problems..
Trouble is, I now have two WIP's on the go simultaneously. I know which is the more important of the two: the big kick-ass historical which serves as the follow-up to the work that's now in the pipeline.
Getting this back on track sounds like a gargantuan task, but it's not really. I've got 50 pages typed up from a 600 page (double-spaced!!) MS, so I've still got a massive amount to go. But I'm plodding patiently along, aiming to tick off a chapter a night (4-8 pages, usually), the aim being to get it ready for final submission by summer of 2013. After about page 150 or thereabouts, I'll need to be editing a bit more, but we're talking about the slash-and-burn stuff here, and I sometimes find that this is easier when I'm not concentrating over-hard on the work-at-hand. Okay, so I'll need to revise it another time with a clearer head to make sure I haven't cut out anything crucial, and I've already flagged up one or two very minor issues which I'll need to sort out before it's done, but I'm damned lucky in that I've already got most of the really hard work behind me.
The only trouble is that I'm really deeply embroiled in a third novel which needs a heck of a lot of work to get it right and which really shouldn't be a priority right now. I've always had trouble juggling projects, at least when it comes to writing fiction. Somehow, I can get fiction and non-fiction projects to feed off each other in a symbiotic way, but when I get so wrapped up in my characters I really want to spend all my writing time with them, and I don't want to get diverted.
A brief break from #3 seems in order, but the problem is that there are a few loose ends that I need to tidy up before I can put it on hiatus, and as a result, I'm really having problems jumping between the two. Thankfully, it's the more important of the two that's really grabbing my attention, but with time at a premium, it's getting frustrating.
Does anypne else out there have this problem? Or are the rest of you quite comfortably at hopping from one WIP to another without so much as a hiccup?
Anyway, it's off to the Writers' Group tonight. I'm still working on #3 as far as this is concerned, but I'm becoming increasingly aware that I'm not putting as much effort into it as I would like to. As problems go, it's not exactly earth-shattering. In fact, it's a very enviable position to be in.
But it's still a wee bit annoying....
[P.S. You will note that my writing mood can inevitably be divined by what I'm listening to. Novel #1= Dead Can Dance - Aeon; Novel #2=Clannad - Anam; and Novel #3=Elbow (take your pick, really) or Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum. Since today's earworm comes from Clannad, it's self-evident what has captured my attention...]
Trouble is, I now have two WIP's on the go simultaneously. I know which is the more important of the two: the big kick-ass historical which serves as the follow-up to the work that's now in the pipeline.
Getting this back on track sounds like a gargantuan task, but it's not really. I've got 50 pages typed up from a 600 page (double-spaced!!) MS, so I've still got a massive amount to go. But I'm plodding patiently along, aiming to tick off a chapter a night (4-8 pages, usually), the aim being to get it ready for final submission by summer of 2013. After about page 150 or thereabouts, I'll need to be editing a bit more, but we're talking about the slash-and-burn stuff here, and I sometimes find that this is easier when I'm not concentrating over-hard on the work-at-hand. Okay, so I'll need to revise it another time with a clearer head to make sure I haven't cut out anything crucial, and I've already flagged up one or two very minor issues which I'll need to sort out before it's done, but I'm damned lucky in that I've already got most of the really hard work behind me.
The only trouble is that I'm really deeply embroiled in a third novel which needs a heck of a lot of work to get it right and which really shouldn't be a priority right now. I've always had trouble juggling projects, at least when it comes to writing fiction. Somehow, I can get fiction and non-fiction projects to feed off each other in a symbiotic way, but when I get so wrapped up in my characters I really want to spend all my writing time with them, and I don't want to get diverted.
A brief break from #3 seems in order, but the problem is that there are a few loose ends that I need to tidy up before I can put it on hiatus, and as a result, I'm really having problems jumping between the two. Thankfully, it's the more important of the two that's really grabbing my attention, but with time at a premium, it's getting frustrating.
Does anypne else out there have this problem? Or are the rest of you quite comfortably at hopping from one WIP to another without so much as a hiccup?
Anyway, it's off to the Writers' Group tonight. I'm still working on #3 as far as this is concerned, but I'm becoming increasingly aware that I'm not putting as much effort into it as I would like to. As problems go, it's not exactly earth-shattering. In fact, it's a very enviable position to be in.
But it's still a wee bit annoying....
[P.S. You will note that my writing mood can inevitably be divined by what I'm listening to. Novel #1= Dead Can Dance - Aeon; Novel #2=Clannad - Anam; and Novel #3=Elbow (take your pick, really) or Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum. Since today's earworm comes from Clannad, it's self-evident what has captured my attention...]
