As 2015 draws to a close, I have a lot to be thankful for. My family is healthy and happy. I am comfortable in my life. And my first novel, THE WITCH OF ZAL, debuted from Evil Jester Press!
Now 2016 looms large ahead, and my focus is turning to the future. What do I want to accomplish in 2016? I decided to keep it simple and focus only on things I could control, because to do otherwise is an invitation to stress and frustration.
So what are these goals?
- Create and implement a new marketing plan for THE WITCH OF ZAL.
- Finish revising and polishing at least 2 of my works-in-progress.
- THE CURSE OF THE PHARAOH’S STONE is close to finished—one more go over and sending it out for proofreading. So I should easily reach this goal.
- VERITAS. This WIP is in a monster revision right now, and I feel that I have been procrastinating because of the magnitude of the task. Once I begin, I will be able to chip away, and there is no reason I can see that I should not finish this by the end of 2016.
- THE ORACLE OF DELPHI, KANSAS has been complete for a year or more, and has made the rounds of some agents. The feedback I received showed that I have some work to do on this book, but I have not yet looked to see how large a task fixing the issues would be. It is possible that this, too, can be done by the end of 2016, but I consider this a stretch goal.
- THE CURSE OF THE PHARAOH’S STONE is close to finished—one more go over and sending it out for proofreading. So I should easily reach this goal.
- When one of the manuscripts above is ready, I will send it out to agents. With luck, I will find one that connects with my work.
And that’s it!
Three things.
I can do that.
What are you looking forward to in 2016?
Editing Multiple Projects at Once: When It Rains…
It pours. Or in my case, when it snows, it blizzards. We are getting some snow this weekend, and predictions range from 5 inches to several feet. So we will see if this will turn into Snowmaggedon 2016, or be a big bust!
I like to tackle creative projects one at a time (with the exception of when I am burnt out on one story and jump to another for relief). With much less writing time, I prefer to be able to keep the creative part of my brain in one world, one story—it makes my writing time more efficient, since my mind has chewed over the story while I’ve been running around doing life-y stuff.
However, I don’t always have the luxury of focusing on one story at a time, and this is one of those times. I am in the middle of a major revision of a YA manuscript, and my middle grade adventure manuscript has come back to me from my co-authors. So now I have two manuscripts to work on—in very different genres, very different voices.
One thing to my benefit is the stage of the writing process for each of them. Curse is in a final proofread/copyedit before I send it out to readers. Veritas is in what I call 3rd draft stage, where I am still working on story, character, and depth. Because the stories are not in the same stage of development, I can switch gears between them a little more easily—copyediting does not call for the same creative muscle as deep revision.
The other thing I do to keep them apart in my mind is that I never work on one directly after the other. In my new work day schedule, I have writing time reserved in the morning (9-11 am), and again after my daughter goes to bed at night (9-11pm). By doing one in the morning and one in the evening, I leave enough time in between to “surface” from one world before diving into the other.
This seems to be doing the trick, although I wonder if it would be the same if I was in, say, drafting mode for both stories.
When you’re working on multiple projects at a time, how do you keep from having them bleed into one another?
Stay warm, people, and if you are in the path of the snowstorm, stay safe!