I consider myself a multi-tasker. I am a stay-at-home mother of two who also juggles about 4-5 freelance jobs on any given day. I cook, clean, take care of three pets, tend to my mother (who still refuses to get a wheelchair) and my husband, volunteer work at the school. On a daily average, I make 12 trips back and forth between various places such as my house, school, my mom’s house, sports practices and/or games, art class, hip-hop, Girl Scouts, play dates, errands.
I feel like a cross between a Jedi and an RV.
But when it comes to my writing, I cannot work on more than one serious, ongoing project at a time. Sure, I can do the 100 WC each week, and I can write blog posts, and I can spew out a mediocre poem if crisis demands. But as far as managing more than one novel at the same time? Forget it.
I have read on various blogs how some writers have multiple projects going at once, novels galore. I wish I had their knack at downshifting from one project to the next. My characters won’t let me just dump them for another cast in mid-draft. They keep popping up.
I tried a NaNo while I was working on my novel, Spark of Madness, and my Spark protag (a stripper) kept showing up in my NaNo setting, which was an elementary school. Not cool. The only way around it was to put Spark on a hiatus so that I could concentrate on my NaNo project. Luckily, that did the trick. By giving my NaNo story my full, undivided attention I was able to whip out 50,000 words in less than 30 days, actually.
Meanwhile, my stripper is stewing, trapped in a file I refused to open for the remainder of November. The downside to this was by the time I returned to her and all of her underworld problems I’d lost the edge I had with it. I was no longer in charge, nor in control. She’d changed her mind about some of her goals, started drinking, and wanted to move to Europe. Whaat? No, that is NOT how I left it with her. My train of thought now sufficiently derailed, I was forced to re-negotiate.
So, anyway, that’s the way it is with this one major novel. It’s bossing me around. I have all of these half-baked projects lying around, waiting for their turn. I had started them when I was in-between drafts, or researching exotic dancing (yes, I had to research it). But when it came time to dive back to the novel, it filled every creative nook and cranny, and kicking out any other project I might have interest in pursuing.
So. If you’re one of those writers who is a multi-tasking genius, step forward. Show yourself! And tell me how do you do it? And if there is anyone out there like me, I’d love to hear from you, too!
Limebird Writers 