Multi-tasking

[msagara]

Having almost finished the requested revisions for one project (I'm waiting to get something clarified before I can actually say done and heave both a sigh of relief and a manuscript out the door), I'm getting back to writing the novel I put aside to work on revisions. [I've been finishing up the Sunburst Jury award work as well.]

Which is sort of my excuse for being so darn slow to get up to speed on HOUSE WAR again.

When I was younger, I found switching between projects almost a relief. I'm not sure if it was due to the fact that I had no children then, and that there was nothing therefore consuming emotional energy and time in the particular fashion; I do think about this a lot. Why? Because I think I'm becoming, in novel terms, a serial monogamist.

It takes me a while to sink the emotional roots I need to have in place into any novel, and when I move to a different project, I seem -- these days -- to uproot them all. When I come back, I have to give myself a big mental slap, and change speed, tone and direction -- all of which would be easier; I have to find the emotional threads and bindings, which is harder than it used to be.

So I'm sort of wondering how many people here can work on two books at once, and how they manage to do it if they can. I can take short story breaks, but I think this has more to do with the differing processes of the two media.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yeah...if one is where you need to be, then that's where you need to be.

For me, working on several concurrently is habit: today frex, I just finished a very nasty, very wrenching scene, and after my tea and LJ-run I'll be doing a rollicking scene for another book, and then I'll rewrite something with some added emotional texture that I thought of during the middle of the night for a third, and ponder the entry point for a tough scene in the fourth. Habit.

But any one of those could grab me by the chitlins and demand I do only it for a stretch, in which case that's what I do.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

... after my tea and LJ-run I'll be doing a rollicking scene for another book, and then I'll rewrite something with some added emotional texture that I thought of during the middle of the night for a third, and ponder the entry point for a tough scene in the fourth

This might sound clueless on my part, but can I ask how you know that the scene that you'll be working on will be a rollicking scene?

Because I think that's part of finding the right head-space quickly, and I think that's where I fall down.

I don't actually know what I'm going to be writing with any certainty even when I know that I'll be working on One Novel. I know the viewpoint. I know, with about 50% accuracy, what I think I'll be writing -- but the veers are sharp and stuctural, and they work in a way that is specific to my process, and necessary for it.

I don't dread the blank screen -- but finding the right tone, or perhaps, anent recent LJ conversations, the right voice is difficult at the moment if I'm working on something else. I wonder if it's just an immersion or an over-focus problem on my part. If I'm close enough to the character that the character is practically speaking in tongues through me, it's not as hard, for all the obvious reasons. And deadlines are such that it's not technically possible not to switch back and forth.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

How do I know the scene will be rollicking? Well, of course I don't know that any reader would find it anything but flat and dreary, but in my head I see the images, I heard the voices, I know pretty much what happens. It ought to be quite fun. To write, anyway. If it reads rotten, well, that's for rewrites!

[msagara.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming it'll work -- I'm not being clear (the perils of writing without and editor <wry g>).

I meant the question more in the sense of certain direction than success of the attempt; I'm busily and not-quietly-enough envying the sense you have of what you -will- be writing next.

I have arcs in which I have that clarity -- the whole of SUN SWORD was almost like that -- but they're almost always endings, and SUN SWORD was, well, the last sixth of a long arc.

-That- book, I could pull away from for chunks of time and then settle back into -- but it was built on so much that had come before it. I think.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

When you say it was built on so much that had come before, well, that's the key.

I'm working on a roman fleuve that I've been writing for 45 years. Some of the projects have had to mature for decades before my skill could match the early glimpses, but like you say, so much is built when the time comes to write I just sink in.