Lots of Progress Today

[queenoftheskies]

After needing to take a day off yesterday, I was quite pleased with my progress today. I worked on three different projects.

Got two plot points finished up on Ancient Secrets. Only five more to go. Hooray!

Started a new romantica that I'm going to see if I can finish in one week. If I can maintain 3,000 words per day, I can. Kind of a pet project, just to see if I can do it. Of course, Ancient Secrets is more important. But, if I can finish Devil May Care in a week, I might attempt to write at least two of these babies a month. That would be a nice accomplishment. :)

Oh, started another novel in my series, too, One Good Woman. Only so I wouldn't lose the scene in my head. Only a few words on it.

Ancient Secrets 4,413 words today

225,435 total words to date

225,435 / 235,000 (95.0%)

Devil May Care 3,000 words today

3,000 total words to date

3,000 / 21,000 (14.0%)

One Good Woman 227 words today

227 total words to date

Just started this one. Not enough progress to even warrant a progress meter yet. :)

And, my julnawrimo total to date:

120,575 / 150,000 (80.0%)

Comments

[navicat.livejournal.com]

*squeee*

OMG so much productiveness! :D

I love hearing this. So...can I read some of it evah??

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

So, when some of these projects are out of the way, I get my vampire porn, yes?

[cathellisen.livejournal.com]

Wow! You are one productive writer.

Do you find that you work better when you have several projects on the go? I just started again on March (which had only a few pages actually written), and because it was a fresh book, with new characters, I found I was just zooming through the story.

I normally like to concentrate on one project at a time, so that my focus is on one set of characters; but I'm wondering now, if I won't perhaps be more productive, if I swap between the various WiPs.

Do you find that it helps?

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

I love the productive days. Sadly, they don't happen as much now. I hope they'll return after things are wound up at work, which will probably be within the next month or two.

Thanks for your interest in reading. I'd love to share at some point...once I get finished and can do some editing.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

It's erotic romance. I felt like some sex-filled fluff would break the tension from work and also the fact that I'm writing some heavy-duty, filled with death and destruction stuff in Ancient Secrets right now. They're fun to write, but totally different from what I normally write.

It's starting to look like weekends might be my only really productive time for a while. I started out wanting to be productive today, but work has already sucked a lot of the life out of me. All I want to know is what the hell is going on...and there seem to be about ten versions of that!!!

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Vampire porn, yes. :)

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Do you find that you work better when you have several projects on the go?

I think I always have several projects brewing in my mind at one time. I'm not always actively working on them, but they're there anyway, and I do think that keeps the imagination hopping and makes me a more productive writer.

If something just has to be written or my brain will explode or I fear I'll forget the mood and feel of it, I stop and write it down, start the piece, whatever it calls for to get it out of my head and onto paper/into the computer.

I've discussed will several folks about working on multiple projects at once. When I first got back into the full swing of writing prose (after writing screenplays for three or four years), I worked on multiple projects at once. Everyone always told me that was the wrong thing to do, that I had to focus only on one primary piece at a time.

Since then, of course, I've noted that a lot of those same people work on short stories while they're in the midst of a novel and that lots of them just get burned out and drop a project or move onto something else when they can't complete what they're working on.

I think, now, that if a person can handle multiple projects, and give them each the focus they deserve, I don't see anything wrong in working that way. Part of it, I think would depend on a person's goals...both long-term and short-term. That would determine when they wanted/needed a particular project finished.

Having said that, when I take some time out to actually work on another novel, usually it's something else in the series I'm working on and normally it's because something I've written in my current work sparks a thought of how that will affect a plot point in a future installment in the same universe. So, I generally sit down and write that out so I have the same flow and continuity and the two feel like they fit together. (Did that make sense?)

Are the different pieces you're working on in the same genre? Or do you switch genres at any point? Sometimes, that can affect the focus as well.

What type of piece are you currently working on?

[cathellisen.livejournal.com]

The three books I'm working on are not a series, so much as a set of stand-alone novels, that are interlinked by occasional plot threads. I was trying to write them one at a rime (to keep the focus as I said), but, to be honest - I was getting bored. (NOT a Good Thing). I'm also playing around with an urban vampire novel set in Cape Town (and oh-so-definitely not Anne Rice in tone), and a short story.

There are so many writerly "rules", that I'm slowly learning, are not neccesarily right for me.

I can't outline - I find I'm much more productive if I let the characters take over, and tell their own stories (the upshot of this is that I'm continuously surprised by what happens *grin*). Now I'm also learning that I'm more productive if I just turn my attention to another WiP when I start feeling like I'm battling with the current one. I come back to the original with a fresh take, and newly-opened eyes.

I'm still very new to this game, and I have so much to learn that it scares me, but I am already starting to feel that I have improved, and it helps to read that other writers have gone through similar learning curves, and come out stronger, better writers.

[cathellisen.livejournal.com]

Erk. Meant to point out that the three-novel thread is dark fantasy, with epic undertones. The short story is something else - I truly do not know what. Set in the future, but that hardly makes it science fiction.

[navicat.livejournal.com]

I hope so. I'll just keep bugging you until then :)