I owe a lot to Aneeka. She is the one who motivated me to write The Phoenix of Nova Terra back in 2007 when I didn’t really think I could finish a novel before the end of the school year. Like I said in the last post, I’ve hit something of a wall in my writing life recently, and a couple of days ago she was the one who pointed it out to me. The conversation went something like this:
Empress: lol – okay, okay!
how are your stories going?
me: very slowly
frustrating
mostly just because of personal disorganization
Empress: yeah, that can happen. tired of school? or just a lot of things you want to do?
me: school is pretty easy right now
it’s just hard to get back into writing regularly
I dunno
I’m trying to juggle two projects
Empress: maybe that’s the problem?
it’s hard focusing on two stories at once
(says the girl that does it all the time – the irony!)
but it really is hard to get all focused on two projects at once
me: it probably is
Empress: I flit between projects because I’m not that into them and write because I’ve been inspired (and tend to be inspired on different stories all the time)
when I get into a project though, then it’s best that I leave the rest behind and just focus on that one
get out all that I have and see how far I can go before I get distracted again
me: yeah
I’m trying to be 100% into two projects at the same time
trouble is, I can’t keep the momentum going on both
Empress: yeah. looks like you’re human, after all 😉
me: dangit!
Empress: you should choose one to focus on and then, if inspiration hits for the other one, focus on that one for a bit before turning back to the main project
me: grr
Empress: think of it this way. You could struggle for 6 months trying to work on two projects and arrive halfway done with both
OR you could focus on one project for 6 months, finish it, and then have plenty of energy to finish the next one
me: that’s true I guess
Empress: it’s better than wearing yourself out
then you’ll be left with no project finished
and just a heap of frustrated dreams
me: I guess that’s right
question is, do I revise my old novel or do I go ahead with the new one?
I’m more excited about the new one, but I want to get the old one finished
Empress: how long would the old one take to get finished?
wait…and you’re having problems with them right now, right?
you know, I would think it’s easier to edit two stories then to write two stories at once. maybe you could finish up the new story and then edit both of them at the same time?
me: that’s an idea
Empress: and NaNoWriMo is coming up. you could finish up the first draft by next month and whallah! only have 2 stories to edit 😀
me: ugggggggggggh
I coooooooooould
that’s intense, though
Empress: well, doing two projects at once is intense as well
why not just switch it around and do this kind of intensity instead? 😉
So, after mulling it over for a couple of days, I’ve decided to do things a little differently.
Instead of trying to do two major projects at once, I’m going to put the revision of Phoenix on hold for now and focus all my energy on Hero in Exile. For November, instead of doing nanowrimo, I’ll try to get 50,000 words deep into this novel instead. After that, if I do roughly 1,000 words a day, I should be in good shape to finish it before the end of January. I don’t anticipate this novel going over 120,000 words, and if it tries to, I’ll do my best to reign it in.
So that’s my goal: Finish Hero in Exile before the end of January. Oh, and write 50,000 words in November.
I’ve noticed that I tend to either be too focused or too distracted. Trying to balance two projects at the same time has taught me that…well, I can’t do it very well. But I do know that once I have one project that I can focus on, I can focus on it until it gets done. That’s what I’m going to do now.
In the meantime, I was chatting with Drek from the writing group, and found out that he could program a way cool widget for my sidebar! It’s going to be a pair of speedometers that show my daily wordcount and my wordcount over the course of the last seven days. Oh, and if I’m nice, he might program a widget that displays my writing projects as status bars! I’m way excited!
Drek recently designed a website for nanowrimo this year. The idea is that every minute, it displays a new word from his novel. Something like that. It’ll be really interesting to see what happens once november starts up.
I can definitely say that the goatee gives Drek programming +2.
