I’m sure there’s folks who do just fine with one project at a time, and I love that for them. And for you, if you’re one of those folks. But for myself, in writing as with my knitting, I like to refer to myself as monogamous+. It’s the subscription version, you see.
I will have one main project that I work on like 80% of the time, and then I have something else that fills another need that I keep kicking around for times when the main project isn’t appropriate.
So I am working on Stephen West’s Painting Bricks shawl right now, but I also have a Celestarium that I only work on at knitting group, and a plain sock that is my walking-around knitting.
I’m re-reading The Count of Monte Cristo, but it’s a heckin’ chonker, so I also have an audiobook of Windburn, and a digital ARC of Corvus and the Broken God*.
I’m drafting the fourth Stone and Sky book, and that’s my laptop writing, the important one, the one that absorbs most of my time. But it’s also some pretty heavy intellectual and creative work right now, since it contains both the new main couple, and, as necessary for the over-arching plot, POVs from the main characters of the previous three books. Each couple has a bonus minor conflict and resolution, and there’s the whole rest of the plot. So it’s a lot. Just hit 70k words, and things are picking up, but I’ve still got a lot to wrap up, so it’s Work to write right now.
Now, I’m really excited about it, I’m motivated to finish it, and I put at least an hour into it a day, which is between 400 and 1200 words, depending on how much choreography is happening in those words.
But, being Important Writing for the Big Screen, similar to the way one does not make major purchases such as airline tickets from their phone, Stone & Sky 4 is confined to the laptop, which is a bit of a problem for me.
I’m trying to manage my scrolling habit, you see. So I downloaded Novelist** on my phone, and that’s where I’m writing the Bookbinder’s Guild Book 1***. It will be a trilogy. I’m not sure that it prevents me from scrolling, but I do manage an additional 500 to 2000 words a day on it, depending on how long the gremlin wants to stay in the bath. I’m fantastically excited about it, I’ve shared some early chapters with some folks and I have at least one person in my DMs, white-knuckling their phone for more.
However, it’s gaslamp fantasy****, which requires considerably more worldbuilding than hidden-world paranormal does, so I do take frequent breaks to figure out things like what the days of the week are called and why. Did I name them after gods? Of course. Did I then have to build a pantheon? Of course. Does doing that necessarily define what’s important in this society? Naturally. It was a two-day detour.
The remaining gaps are filled by the ideas doc, highlights of which include, but are not limited to, a Romeo & Juliet romance about two people who can only meet at dawn and twilight; Stuart Little, witch hunter, who goes to a support group for people who’ve been turned into animals; a coven of urban witches who use fiber arts to fight mental illness; and a romantic thriller about a second-chance romance between a couple rebuilding their relationship after hardship.
Will any of these see the light of day? No idea, but when The Bookbinder’s Guild becomes Big Screen Writing because I’m done with Stone & Sky, maybe I’ll pick the three I’m the most excited about and let the internet decide.
Recent Writing
“So,” Tony frowned at the floor. “You don’t hate me?”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “Never did. I don’t really hate anybody, I just have Resting Bitch Whole Body, so people make some assumptions.”
Next time let’s talk about coffee.
Do good, friends.
*Which is stellar, by the way, I closed out the bar reading it the other night.
**Not a sponsor, but I’m not opposed. HMU, Novelist.
***Think The Count of Monte Cristo meets Divine Rivals. Something that has always bothered me about TCoMC adaptations is that they skip the middle part, the part where Edmond investigates his arrest and imprisonment, and rewards those who tried to help him. This is the part that turns him into the Count, and it always, always, gets skipped. Hence the trilogy. Book 1 is a heist with a slowburn romantic subplot because I can’t not. Book 2 is a detective book with romantic conflict. Book 3 is another, more vengeful heist, and contains the HEA. Romance beats distributed among all three books. I’d do it as one, but unless Stone & Sky succeeds beyond my wildest dreams, there’s no way anyone is publishing a 1200 page book.
****Gaslamp fantasy is industrial, as opposed to classic fantasy, which is medieval.
Then They Kissed 