The Trap of Multiple Projects
If Lane and I don’t hit our goal of 10,000 words this November, it will be because he’s been stuck doing overtime (more on that next week when we talk about stealing time to write) and I have been seduced by my other work-in-progress (WIP).
Or maybe I should say I haven’t been seduced away from that other WIP by Magpie. Because years of discipline and good habits are biting me in the ass.
When I was a baby writer just toddling off on my first novels, I had the nasty tendency to work on multiple projects at the same time. I always believed I could focus on the older one and the newer one at the same time without any trouble, but I think y’all sense where this is going. Very quickly, I learned the appeal of the shiny new idea made it super easy to abandon an older idea just at the time when it got the most difficult. Stephen King wrote, “The scariest moment is just before you start” but I’m calling bullshit. The start of a new project is the most fun, most exciting, and best part! The full potential is there, untapped and undiscovered. At the beginning, you can fool yourself into thinking your first draft will be perfect and clean.
It’s the middle that sucks. It's only when you get to the middle that you have to remind yourself writing is hard, you will fix mistakes and holes and stupid dialogue in revision. When the writing gets hard, a lot of people give in and move on to the new shiny idea.
If you’re new to writing and struggle to finish a draft, Please Do Not Do This. Resist the temptation of the new idea. There will always be something that feels easier to write, half the battle is committing to the current manuscript and not giving up on that old idea until it’s a complete draft.
My technique for dealing with the onslaught of new ideas was an organizational solution. I keep new ideas in a Google Drive document called “Quick and Dirties” and I add scenes, notes, outlines, plot bunnies, character descriptions, and anything I want in this very messy document. I sometimes do this on the train, in a car, waiting in line. Anytime I’m writing on my phone, it’s in this document. Occasionally, I take myself to a coffee shop and treat myself by opening this document on a real laptop and not my phone. Each New Year, I start a new “Quick and Dirties” and migrate over the best and most interesting ideas and periodically read through past years to see if there’s anything fun I’m ready for now. Sometimes by the time I take these “notes” out of this document, it’s a work unto itself. The longest story I ever pulled out was 35,000 words and just needed to be put in order and fleshed out. Not a bad way to start a detailed outline.
So when I sit down to write for my two hours a day, I write in a program called Scrivner. And I work on my current project and nothing else. I mentally commit to The One I’m working on until it’s finished. While I’ve certainly abandoned novels over the years, it’s not because I got distracted. It’s legit because the project wasn’t working for me anymore.
Generally, I advise my students and clients to keep notes in one document and write in another. If you’re real fancy edit in another program.
But I have to challenge these habits now. Magpie is going to be a serial release, I’m writing new stories for the podcast, and I still want to publish my romance novels. That’s at least three projects to be faithful to at the same time.
I’d love to hear from writers who successfully finish drafts while working on more than one project at a time and see how they do it. What tips and tricks do you use to keep focused on multiple WIPS? How do you stop yourself from falling out of love with any of them?
All that being said, I’m only a little behind on my word count for NaNoWriMo and so close to finishing the other draft and entering revisions... Maybe I can still make this creative polycule work.
Over the next couple of months, Lane and I are going to be working on a book together. We’re starting in November (NaNoWriMo!) and my plan with this section of the substack is to write about that journey from the opening outline to the finish then through the revisions. If that sounds like something you want to see, make sure you are subscribed, and let us know how this section is working out for you!
And if you’re looking for a professional developmental editor or a book coach, I’m on Fiverr!