Being fair

Too much communications ?!?! (Photo credit: occhiovivo)

 

Today I’m posing a question that I’d like people’s thoughts on: Can you work on two projects at once and be fair to both of them?

I’ve always been a one-story-at-a-time kind of girl. I have never been able to devote enough attention to two different projects at once and do them both justice. One will be going fine, but the other will be neglected (and in all likelihood complain about it loudly). I’m also the sort who insists on finishing one story before starting on the next one, because otherwise I’d have a whole stable of unfinished tales out there. Now, JRR Tolkein I am not, so having a collection like that doesn’t really inspire me.

What I’ve been doing this year is working on novel #2, which has a working title of Caffeinated. (This will probably change a number of times during the writing process, but I quite like having working titles even if they do swap around every other week. It beats the situation I found myself in a few years back when I was ready to post a novel online and discovered I didn’t have a title, so I just called it the first thing that came into my head. I didn’t like what I came up with then and I like it even less now, but it seems to have caught on so I am loathe to change it.) I gave myself permission to start work on Caffeinated because novel #1 had a completed first draft. That, and I only came up with the premise just before Christmas and it was all new and exciting in my mind.

Trouble is, I’m falling into old habits. I had set aside this year to edit my first novel, the one whose first draft I completed in November. But I’ve been working on novel #2, and as such novel #1 has fallen by the wayside. I haven’t even opened it this year, let alone started editing. And while I told myself it was becuase I was waiting for a book I’d ordered about structure to arrive from the UK, it arrived last week and I still haven’t done anything about it. Yep, I’m finding myself unable to work on two different projects at once again.

I’m a little torn as to what to do about this. Should I quash my instincts and make a concerted effort to work on both at once? Or should I make a deal with myself, alternating with one story one week (or month) and the other story the next? Or should I work really hard to get a draft for novel #2 done by, say, August, and then edit novel #1 after a good nine months’ break?

What works for you?

The Creative Writer Blogging Award!

Today I’m very excited to be accepting the Creative Blogging Award, and would like to give a HUGE thank you to Justin at Write21 for nominating me. Justin has an excellent blog and I hope you all check it out really soon if you haven’t already.

 

 

The award, apparently, “is meant to be given to those who share their creativity through writing stories, poems, and themselves through their writing.

The rules are…

1. This award should be given to those who have written a poem, a story, scripts, or some other creative form of writing for their blog.
2. Thank the blogger who nominated you for the award, and link to their blog.
3. Write a 8 line poem about yourself.
4. Nominate 4 other bloggers for the award and notify them of their nomination.”

Okay. Easy, right? Let’s see …

I’ve already thanked Justin for his nomination, so now I have to write a poem about myself. This is really off-the-cuff, so please excuse its vagueness and its quality.

 

Hidden from prying eyes,
Chasing the wind,
Clutching at subplots
As magic begins;
Mother and co-worker,
Partner and friend,
Telling a story
From beginning to end.

 

Sorry about that. Now, onto the good stuff – nominations! I am thrilled to nominate the following bloggers for this award, in no particular order:

• Sarah Ballance
• Tracey Baptiste from Knitting With Pencils
• Bex from Bex Book Nook
• Eric Swett from My Writer’s Cramp

Now, I sincerely hope you go check out these bloggers as soon as you can because they’re all definitely worth reading. Thanks again to Justin for nominating me for this award, and have a lovely week!

When going back to work means more, not less, writing time

filedesc http://www.epa.gov/win/winnews/images05/0510keyboard.gif (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

It sounds counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? But for me, at least, that’s how it’s worked out. Going back to work has given me more writing time than I had when I was at home.

I returned to work on August 6, after a seventeen-month maternity leave. I work part time, four days a week, one of which is from home and three of which are in the office. And do you know what? I’ve written more in these past three weeks than I did in the three months before, I think.

Before you jump to conclusions, no I’m not writing when I should be working. However, what being back at work means is more time spent in front of a computer, without the interruptions that young children generally provide. What being back at work means, for me, is a good half an hour to an hour each day – in my lunch break - when I can just write, without interruptions.

Sure, I could have got that much time at home … but not uninterrupted. Even when the baby went to sleep, getting a solid hour’s writing time was almost unheard of, and there were other things to do that couldn’t be done when he was awake, like the vacuuming, or cleaning the bathroom, or whatever. (My youngest child is a climber. Leaving him alone for more than a few minutes means that you’ll find him on top of the dining room table, or something similar, when you return.) In short, there were always other things that had to be done in order to keep the house running smoothly. Besides, clearing off the table and getting the laptop out also took more time and frankly, that didn’t always sound appealing.

I recognise, of course, that there is an element of choice in all this. I could have chosen to have an un-vacuumed, un-cleaned house and used that time to write. I could have done all the cleaning on weekends, when my husband was around to keep an eye on the kids. (Don’t worry, he does his share of cleaning too. I’m just referring to my jobs.) I could have chosen to use that time to write. And it probably says something about me that I didn’t – maybe some people will think I’m less of a writer because I didn’t make that time every day. That’s okay. I’m comfortable with my decisions.

Now, though, the fire is back and the manuscript is definitely getting finished. I’ve written 5000 words a week over the past three weeks, upping my tally to 86K altogether. And it’s all because I’m already sitting at the computer, I’m already in that writing pose, and I have some time when I KNOW that no kids are going to need me. It’s heaven.

So yes, going back to work has, for me at least, meant more writing time. Now what about you? When have you found that something helped your writing when you expected it to hinder it? Because I’m sure I’m not alone here. Writing, it seems, has a way of sticking its head in and sorting things out when you least expect it.

 

Related articles

• After the hiatus, getting back into the groove (meritaking.wordpress.com)
• How I Got My Writing Groove Back with Flash Fiction Short Stories (susannahartigan.com)
• Do You Really Need to Write Every Day? (writinghood.com)