When I began writing in earnest, I set some goals for myself. The plan went like this: write every day, finish the project, and keep writing—book after book after book, back to back to back. Was I a little presumptuous? Perhaps. But like a good little boy with big hopes and dreams, I was ready to get serious about novelcraft.
Months passed and I was writing every day. Well, mostly. I was a bit overwhelmed to be honest, and I craved ye olde feeling of completion. You see, completion was there when I wrote short stories. It was there when I blogged regularly. But I felt only doubt and anxiety as my project grew longer. Worse, I began to feel stuck in this one story. Shorter projects naturally provide the ability to create anew. New worlds, new characters, new chaos. Here I was glued to just one.
When I realized that I had forgotten to include time for editing in my novel-after-novel-after-novel approach (so many hyphens!), that feeling threatened to compound. With interest.
Think of it like this—for all your life, you’ve only ever watched 30-minute sitcoms. New stories, new adventures, quick hopeful resolutions, no time to get bored. And then someone introduces the Lord of the Rings trilogy—the director’s cut. It’s novel. It’s nice. It’s able to accomplish a depth you’ve never experienced before with sitcoms. But it’s also very… very… long. Too long for your sitcom-addled brain to handle. That’s me.
And so I amended my writing schedule. This was brilliant! No, seriously, this isn’t my usual sarcasm here. The new plan would allow room to breathe and still keep busy. Novel-to-novel-to-novel became this: Write Novel A, write Novel B, revise and edit Novel A. After this, I would continue with a back and forth of writing and then editing my previous novel. I’d have fresh eyes to look at each story. I’d have momentum. I’d have fewer hyphens!
Wow! I’m getting good at this whole planning thing!
Well, in the moments following the completion of the first draft of Novel A,, I felt so damn good! Too good, it turns out, because I got cocky. Why break between stories? I thought. Nah! Who needs it when I can do both—at the same time! That’ll work!
It did not work.
It turns out that working on two stories at once is akin to studying two separate paintings, one with each eye. It’s overwhelming. It’s slow going. It’s headache inducing.
I think Stressed P.K. had it right. I need to slow down. Go back to the write-edit-write plan. I know, I know—the hyphens have returned! But they’re really convenient.
So I’ve slowed down. I’ve spent the past week highlighting a few revision-necessary portions of Story A—character trait alterations, sudden plot-point additions, stuff like that. Per the gentle suggestion of my wife, even the title is now under review. Soon I’ll be back to work on Novel B. Only Novel B.
Order is restored. Sanity will soon be mine!
Hey, while we’re on the subject of progress, you may be interested in the “My Projects” page. It provides synopses and progress updates for each novel. Find it HERE. I hope it proves interesting for fellow struggling writers, the morbidly curious, and for the friends and family members who make up the majority of my repeat readers. Thanks for the love, Mom and Dad!
In the meantime, if you’re a writer, keep writing. If you’re a reader, keep reading. And if you’re rich, consider helping a guy out by sponsoring a sentence.
