Be warned. I am seriously jumped up. I don’t know if it’s better nutrition, or just overall happiness. Tonight is a kind of weeee!!! night.
In addition to Oliver Toddle and his pleasant reception today, I’ve gotten some good news that I can’t tell you about because right now it is nothing real.
Coy is not a fair way to play with Tamago readers, but after a certain point in my author journey, I’ve decided not to thrill you with every almost that comes my way. The first few photos of baby walking were cute, but you don’t want to sit through a whole album of the same picture. we all know how this works, because we’ve all been close to some almosts.
This is a pretty damned cool almost, though. I would especially like to thank Maggie Stiefvater for this almost. Even if nothing happens.
***
As bouncy as I am tonight, I am having trouble working on the troll novel. Last night I was doing angsty Quartz stuff, and, well, happy is definitely the wrong mood to write that in, and I don’t want to let this one go.
I’m going to try a new experiment in the interest of writing by the pound (all praise to Saint Julia, goddess of writing by the pound). Sometimes my brain needs to stop writing to do a little sorting, brainstorming, or problem solving. What I often do is lie fallow while this happens.
Then there’s Seanan McGuire. Seanan works nonstop, like a golem. A sparkling, 10-carat, diamond golem. And what she does is that when she runs into a corner, she works on another thing. Let me show you a link to Seanan’s most recent works in progress list.
*blinks*
Okay, so what’s going on here is that Seanan is moving from project to project to project to…you get the idea. Seanan, I’d love for you to explain to readers how you keep all these stories separate, if you’re reading.
That said, while I’m not sure I could cast my net this wide, what if I had 2 or 3 things going on at the same time, and I could be working on something else while I’m setting something else aside. It’s a thought.
Do you work this way? Could you work this way? Your opinion solicited and welcome.
Right. I’m going to keep tiggering my way through my happy evening. It won’t be so bad taking time off tonight. I have a big ole writing afternoon blocked out for tomorrow.
Cheers!
Catherine (caffeine makes you jittery?)
Wow, I’ve never heard of Seanan, but that is so impressive about all her projects.
Whatever is in the hopper, ooo, I hope it comes true, too, that would be great!
I used to work this way; work on several stories at once. I’m not sure what happened, but I haven’t worked like that in years. I’m not sure why. I think it was because the kids were little and I felt like I was never getting any break or rest, and there was no celebrating the one finished story because there were the five or six still to do. Hm, I think that was my logic.
I have no idea where she gets all her energy. She’s also an artist and a musician.
I too wonder about having too many projects to work on. I’m thinking two or three is good. I kind of did this while I was working on Hulk Hercules and Substance, and it wasn’t too bad. But 50 at a time? Not so much.
Catherine
I’ve done two or three at a time, and taken moments from the novel to kick out a short story or poem, and I’ve got a few things halfway done (four of which I want to get back to, 2 novels and 2 short stories) but damn.
Hi, Catherine!
Keeping the stories separate is generally a matter of making sure that they’re different enough not to collide. I’ll usually have one active “dark” project, one active “light” project, and something in the middle. So right now, there’s a Toby book in the middle slot, an InCryptid book in the light slot, and a Mason book in the dark slot. The light slot also gets a lot of YA, and the occasional romance. It’s fun.
I also budget my time to allow every book to get an end-to-end “voice pass,” where I go through to make sure there’s not a point where Verity sounds like Toby, or Shaun sounds like Georgia, or whatnot. Finally, I treat it like reading comics, or watching TV. You tend to get little slices of a bigger story, but it’s pretty rare, once you’re in that mindset, to start thinking that Batman is a member of the X-Men. So it’s just a matter of forcing my brain into a sort of storytelling yoga position, and forcing it to stay there.
Seanan
I’m taking a break from my “epic” WIP to do some nanoing, but I had to wait until I was solidly done with part one before I could set it down.
Most days I’m lucky to remember the names of the characters, and the title of the piece I’m working on, which made for a very awkward and probably never to be answered query letter I sent out last week–one of those train wrecks you only see in the 1/1000th of a second as your button finishes depressing the send button.
Seanan, thank you for elaborating. I’m sure readers will find this useful.
Shannon, get back to work. 🙂
Catherine