It’s funny at the moment. I am really busy and doing a lot but I’m not getting anything done. Especially the writing. Which is the most important thing.
I did make a plan, though. I decided that I will write three books in the current series before returning to the one I started last November.
My husband was all confused when I tried talking writing strategy with him. So, In 2012 I started writing this urban fantasy series. I took me two years to get the first novel revised, then I wrote a rough draft of the second, started revising that and decided it was too bad, wrote the second one again, wrote a rough draft of the third one, and revised the second second one.
Then I dragged my feet. Then I found a nice person willing to read it and she confirmed what I already suspected – the first novel is not good enough to be published. Fixing this would mean more than a rewrite, I would have to take the ideas and the story and start from scratch. For all three novels. Totally doable but I have to say that after spending six years on this I am just a little reluctant to start the whole thing over yet again.
So I tried writing a chick-lit novel in November and failed, and the I started a paranormal mystery that should be the first in a series. I wrote the rough draft, and then instead of revising that I started yet another novel, another urban fantasy that I was really excited about, and that one I am still working on. I’m not quite halfway through the writing.
Now all the indie publishing advice says that you should wait with publishing until you have three in a series, and then you should release them one after the other.
My plan had been to finish the current book and then to revise the one I wrote before. But now I’m thinking it would be much better to write the first three books in the series I’m currently writing, plus a novella or short story on top, publish those and then maybe go back to the paranormal mystery and write a few books in that series. I will have to revise it anyway which means going back and reading it so reacquainting myself with the world and characters should be pretty easy.
The plan is a good one. Never mind that this book is seriously kicking my ass and is going very, very slowly.
And that – the very, very slowly part – is why I feel totally unproductive.
I did a lot yesterday.
I delivered a letter by bike because we’re out of stamps, and then I rode to the other end of town to get gas for the lawnmower. It’s always a little weird to pull up at the gas station on my bike with my little canister but I did it.
Then back home and off to the grocery store. A wonderful lunch on the porch:
(And no, I didn’t eat all of those mashed potatoes. They were good but that was way too much.)
Then I talked to the boy a little, and did the dishes and thought about writing and my story. I have to figure out what happens next and I just realized that I have an inkling of what might happen in the next two books as well. Very exciting.
I taught my students and one of them didn’t show up and I still couldn’t do anything productive because I was waiting for her.
Then I decided to skip strength training because I didn’t feel like it. No, I don’t think that’s a valid reason either.
And then I felt all lost and weird because I had decided to skip dinner (which is a whole other post for another day) and that upends my usual evening routine. Which apparently these days involves sitting in bed with the laptop telling myself that I will write more words any minute now until I’m too sleepy for that.
Fun!
Today there will be running and maybe going to the farmer’s market for potatoes and teaching quite a bit and more procrastinating about writing, I’m sure.
Yeah, life in progress.