Yesterday, I was reminded that I've been forgetting to do "Indie Life" posts. (Sorry!) Indie Life is a once a month feature where Indie writers discuss the indie life. If you want to visit more blogs, click here.
Recently, I've been reading about authors who are thinking or trying to work on more than one book at a time. Scary. A few months ago, I was pondering doing it two. One problem with being a writer is that there's always the "shiny new idea." And when you're sludging through edits or proofreading or even figuring out how to get out of a plot corner, the shiny new idea sparkles like gold. But is it real gold or fool's gold?
So I asked a writer friend (a real expert since she has 50 published novels) if she'd ever written two books at once. She had. She told me the way she did it was to work on one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. So that's what I've been doing. And she's right. It works. But it takes discipline.
I've gotten it to work because I force myself to do edits in the morning. If I work on the new book in the morning, I find that I can't put it down when the time becomes afternoon--the new gold sparkles too brightly.
I worried about whether doing two things at once would hinder my creativity. It doesn't. It actually feeds it--my word count on the new book has dropped at all.
Of course, the time isn't coming from nowhere. My yard and garden are getting pretty skanky. And there's a stack of boxes (my son moved out last week and didn't take everything) sitting in the corner. Maybe I need to be thankful that my computer needs to go in for servicing (mother board issues) so I can get everything organized again. Although that gold is really sparkly and I know how to write with pen and paper.
Because being Indie doesn't have to mean going it alone.
JOIN US FOR INDIE LIFE!
I actually have was doing this as well. I stopped to focus more on Ashes. I like it since my mind tends to wander, this helps me fill it with constant new shinnies.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post. I think I read that Stephen King did something similar (I think). Free writing during one time period and edits during another. I like your idea of doing the edits in the morning ... :) And I still have boxes left by my son in the other room. I need to finish getting his stuff put away! Have a great week.
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