I understand there are people who want to write A novel. I understand, in fact, there are people who write a novel. Heck, there are even — some of them are my friends — people who write A NOVEL AT A TIME.
Lucky sods.
Currently on the docket: the long running FINALLY got the voices right next book of the chronicles of Lost Elly: Orphans of the stars. The next Rhodes, Rhodes to Hell, ALMOST finished. A second regency romance (what? Shud up. The first, Lady Peacock, is at the final edit, maybe today, and will then be released). A JAFF, Double O Darcy, Winter Prince being played with to figure where it broke.
They all get a little bit done on them, if not every day then close to every day. Orphans is getting the biggest push, because otherwise it won’t let me sleep. (What’s known as the whip hand.)
And why am I doing that? Wouldn’t it be saner, not to mention less exhausting to finish one novel then do the others?
Well, yes. And I really really really wish I could, okay. But when I try, all of them shut up and months are lost. Trust me, I have done this.
So–
So nothing. I lump it. I could give you a list of novels that were written in tandem, or sometimes three at a time in the past.
Takes longer, sure, but compared to what? It’s not longer than stopping writing all together.
Still….
I’m so jealous of people who write a novel at a time.
As for my process, the best that can be said for it is that if it’s crazy and it works, it’s not crazy.
Except every time, I’m terrified it won’t work.
And yet, it’s what I have.
Back to juggling the live chain saws. Before one falls wrong.
Mad Genius Club 
19 responses to “Juggling”
How about a Dyce Dare? Still waiting for #4.
Four and five are almost finished, but Rhodes got loud. Next. I promise. Then next shifters. The year of finishing all the things (mostly because partial manuscripts BOTHER me.)
YAY!!!
$SPOUSE (and I) will be very happy with more Dyce. The Dyce-shifters intersection was a lot of fun, though since $SPOUSE is somewhat allergic to modern fantasy, I neglected to mention it.
Yay for finishing projects!
For years, I was terrified that if I took on more than one book, I would lose interest in whichever one was further along. There were exceptions, like the time I wrote the two middle books of Ancestors of Jaiya in the same year and a half, due to complications. One was an adventure story that I grabbed from the wrong angle to start out with, and then had to rewrite from scratch, and the other was a kind of political/legal thriller that just took a long time to coalesce. Then, sometime in 2024, I started working on Pride and Planetoids as a background project alongside the second Hunt Healer King book. And it stayed as a background project through the third book in that series and then suddenly I was drafting a prequel to the HHK books, a mystery(!?!?) and Pride and Planetoids simultaneously. As someone who’s been both, I think I’m liking the juggling better. Looking forward to the JAFF and Regency books, btw.
I would like to point out I’m fending off (with daggers and extreme will power) a “Vera Moss Hayden, detective.” (Virrat Trohem, Skip’s ancestor, post adoption.) Sigh.
Maybe it’s the lack of good new mysteries to read getting to us?
Don’t tempt me. The fantasy detective novel is too much and I cannot write just now. Which is rather painful.
Ouch. Supprt hugs.
THAT is the worst pain writers can go through. HUGS.
Oooh … that does sound interesting. Especially if it influences the descendants.
I can do two short stories, and have been as ideas attack. I can’t do two different worlds at the same time, or at least have not been able to thus far. The language and mind shifts work against me when I try.
It’s always two different worlds….
Honestly, I only do one at a time. They’re a sequential series after all, and I don’t know what’s going to happen in the one I’m writing. Makes continuity challenging. ~:D
routinely love to have two books/AKA WIPs at a time – and usually somewhat staggered as to degree of finishedness so I can bring it out to build interest and goose sales of all the others. Secondly – so that when I get stuck or temporarily bored of one, I can work on the other. Maximizes efficiency … well, mostly. There are a couple of books which got stuck on the back burner for years, before I buckled down and finished the work.
Eh. That’s how we all roll. Individually.
I suppose some people go through life taking everything linearly, one thing at a time. I have a hard time imagining it though. Maybe in a laboratory setting, but real life tends to be much more chaotic. Heck, even cooking runs more than one process at a time. Now Sarah, I can imagine, walks each day through a vast crowd of characters like she was walking through a village market. Characters talking to her from all sides. Just have to remember which booth you’re in front of.
I am going to use this against relatives who assure me that Real Writers lock in and finish one story, at a time, completely. And then go until they finish the series, and then move on….
Meanwhile I keep tripping over stuff that is super neat for the world I’m not currently working in, or at least a different story in one of the two groups.
It does give the writer circle around advantages to keeping fresh.
But, beware all you aspiring writers who hear this! You do have to circle back, in order to finish. Eventually.
I’m just excited that first-book is coming together. Working on multiple is a problem for future me.
Chapter 18 and I are not getting along. I skipped over it and wrote the next four. It hates me more, now. That’s kind-of two at once.