I find myself going to Montreal...

[msagara]

On fairly short notice, for the weekend. For ConCept, which is the 13-14th of November.

I've been thinking a bit about a couple of questions asked elsewhere, vis a vis writing, and will post when I get home; I'm leaving on the overnight train (and mourning the loss of my beloved sections; they've changed their trains, and now offer rooms and deluxe rooms, but no sections!), and will arrive at some very early hour, which is made bearable only by the promised company.

I'm attempting to pack now. I am discovering the writing-avoidance, like packing-avoidance, is built-in. Saw cristalia at work today, where, in discussing the "post a line from a work in progress" meme on LJ, I expressed my utter astonishment at just how many works people have in progress at one time. I was never, ever capable of this; call it over-focus. The most that I will have "in progress" at one time are two projects -- and in that case it's because I've put the one in project on hold to meet a different deadline, which I will meet before returning to the work in progress. I didn't always tend to be quite so focused; there was a time when I could work on both a novel and a short story (but only one of each) at the same time, doing one in the morning and the other in the evening. That would be my definition of multi-tasking; I've never had a dozen projects on the go at the same time.

To everyone who has more than one, how does that work for you?

More later.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I usually have one thing I think of as my primary project, and a handful of secondary ones. This is easier to explain with a real-time snapshot of what I'm doing right now:

Primary project: Rewriting the memoir according to my editor's notes. This doesn't take the level of total concentration that writing the first draft or new material does, but it's what I have a contract for and need to get out soonest, so that's going to take about eighty-five percent of my writing time till it's done.

Secondary project # 1: Secret Project # 1, which is a script of sorts. Not being actively worked on at the moment, but could bounce into being the primary project at any time after the memoir is finished, or not, depending on whether I get a contract for it. (Right now it's on spec but being seriously considered.)

Secondary project # 2: A short story which is due at the end of December, and which is currently giving me the highest level of creative enjoyment, because it's a new project and I'm writing it for the first time (as opposed to having a finished draft which I'm re-writing.) But it's not for pay.

There are other secondary projects, but none being actively worked on or with the likelihood of needing to be actively worked on this month. (Inactively worked on = thinking or discussing them, but not actually writing anything down other than maybe some notes.)

I started working like this years ago when I was writing a novel in my off hours and my day job was writing TV. Necessity is the mother of invention, but also, as it turned out, burn-out.

All the same, when I'm on a less frenzied schedule I find that having one project to turn to when I'm sick of another has upped my productivity enormously. Unfortunately, it's cut down on my reading time. I now spend more time writing than reading, and this seems wrong somehow.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

truepenny said that at some point she realized she was getting the same kind of satisfaction from writing that she used to get from reading -- I think she said something like it had become her default activity, or default comfort activity, although she phrased it better -- and that made a lot of sense to me, as a necessary part of evolution as a writer, either as the cause or the result of committing yourself to making time for writing.

Like most of the other people commenting, "in progress" just means "neither finished nor abandoned" for me, although things shift their places in queue. I also have things I consider in queue but not in progress, because I haven't written any of them, although I may have a sentence or a paragraph in my head. But generally they're unwritten and still accumulating the necessary critical mass.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

truepenny said that at some point she realized she was getting the same kind of satisfaction from writing that she used to get from reading -- I think she said something like it had become her default activity, or default comfort activity, although she phrased it better -- and that made a lot of sense to me, as a necessary part of evolution as a writer, either as the cause or the result of committing yourself to making time for writing.

Actually, this has never happened to me; it's work. There are times when it's a hypnotic, compulsive, or even joyful work -- but boy, the slogs... the swamps... I would throw away whole books before I'd put up with that much fear and uncertainty in my reading <wry g>. I want to be truepenny.