So, I published a new book last week, and finished a novel in a different series the prior week. I’ve cleaned my office (do not open the closet door), rotated the cat twice, weeded the gardens, alphabetized my canned goods, and …
So, what do to next?
I have a herd of projects and a limited time. Oh, and two active series, plus random stuff. Happily, I decided to work on a spate of short stories, get them done for future use and out of my head, then go back to one of the series. At the end of the Day Job year, I’d been attacked by several story possibilities. I jotted them down during quiet moments between the frenetic rushes, and so I dug those out and sorted.
One had a solid core, but how I’d started it would not work at all. So I redid the opening, then transcribed what I had. It will work now, especially if I change some things and leave the ending … a bit more vague. Another works as is, so once I get the first one drafted, I will attack the second story. That gives me four unused-thus-far short stories I can release as a batch when I need something.
Then there’s a novella in a different series that I just need to do some research reading and fill in. I can read around writing, and get that knocked down by the end of this month, if there are no more surprises. Again, something I can release between novels and other things, or use if I have a spell when I can’t write because of Life.
If I can get those done, and the next Familiar Generations novel well started by August 8, then I will be ready for [cue scary music here] the Return of Day Job. And I know that Familiar Generations is easier for me to write with other things going on than are the Merchant stories.
The point is that I have stuff simmering at all times. I can pull something off the stack, look it over, and it might work now. Or I might look at it and sigh, mutter, “It was a good idea, but not my genre” or “vignette, not story” and tuck it away again. Or I might toss it, as I did three pieces today. One was so dated that it wouldn’t work as a story, one didn’t really make sense no matter what I tried to do with it, and one … too “woe is me.” Which is fine. Other bits proved to be useful, and after being ignored, are ready to go. Sort of like letting yeast dough rise while you tidy the kitchen, or have a cup of coffee or tea, or work on the filling.
Do you keep a bits and pieces folder? If so, have you glanced into it recently? What about that fan-fic you want to write, or seeing if you can mimic someone’s style in order to find out what they do that you love so much?
If you are between projects, or need to let something rest while your hind brain comes up with needed pieces, take a look at the odds and ends file. You might find some things that you can use, or that will be good to start as a brain-refresh once you finish the task at hand.
Mad Genius Club 
9 responses to “I’m Done – Now What?”
I think I have more bits and pieces than anything else . . . Very fun to revisit, some times. Or frustrating. YA novel that depends on getting the pictures back from the one hour photo mat. I’d forgotten about those things . . .
I started a story in 1986, but today it probably wouldn’t work. Having the internet might mean that information the characters had to struggle for at that time, would be readily available. Or maybe it wouldn’t be available at all. In 1986 the church I was volunteering at got a computer with 10K of storage. Wow! They could print the parish labels. I don’t know that anyone would want to read a story set in such a crazy unbelievable environment…
Chuckle Chuckle
I’ve read at least one story where if the characters had cell phones, at least half of the story would be gone.
Technology does that. There’s a Father Brown story that no longer works because to work it out, you have to know that it was published before Navy ships were routinely fitted with radios. Consequently, you would not know when something that happened to the admiral on it because it could have happened at any point on the voyage.
“Oh come oooooonnnn. No one ever waited five minutes for a single picture, or three minutes for an email or discussion to come up on screen! And what’s with the horrible noise?”
I also can’t resurrect the story because the heroine ran around looking for Halley’s Comet as part of the story line and… well, that was then, not now.
Sounds like it would have to be a period piece.
I’ve written drafts of the first 3 books of my current series in process (The Affinities of Magic), and I’m constantly fabulating bits and pieces of those (corrections/amplifications) and the concepts/contents of the next following series entries, esp. when drifting off to sleep at night. I rouse just enough to scribble something relevant with a novel series number on a piece of paper, and then they accumulate in novel-specific bundles in all their internally contradictory form when I revise or start the mockup process of the series entry in question. I won’t publish until the first 4 books are finished, so that there is a meaty chunk in place, so things are a bit malleable in those first entries until then.
Picture: https://karenmyersauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AffinitiesNotes.jpg
(The 4th book will feature the repair of the old clocktower in a Wizard Guild Hall.)
I tend to fall out of love with my series after a while, so my best shot at getting them written is to do them consecutively. So I usually know what I am writing next