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

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I've been able to do short story breaks in the middle of novels, but I started out a serial monogamist with novels and remain so. Once, for a period of about six months, I tried working on three novels simultaneously, but I found the required head-wrenching to be difficult, and I really wanted just to sink myself into one. So I did (turned out to be HOLDER OF LIGHTNING.) The other two are on my hard drive, left where I dropped them.

Maybe if I were writing two novels with nearly identical voices, which wouldn't require a drastic change in tone...

OTOH, for the last several years I've had a "side novel" that I turn to if I'm between projects, or if I need to take a substantial break from the current novel-in-progress/under-contract. Maybe one day I'll actually finish that novel.... I do like what I have quite a bit.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, my process is exactly like sleigh's.... even to the "side novel." :)

[msagara.livejournal.com]

Same question I asked sleigh -- is the side project in SF, if the main one is fantasy, or vice versa?

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I find the side project's genre matters less than its familiarity. Side projects are usually books that have a lot of known quantities: the setting, usually most of the plot, the characters. It's often a sequel to an unsold series.

I recently finished the latest "side project," which was an SF sequel. The new side project will probably be fantasy in an existing universe, but not directly related to any of the material I've written about it so far.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

Can you return to the ones that you've left idle now that you've written three books, or would the distance from the projects change them too much?

I was wondering if I would have the same difficulty if I were working in different genres or sub-genres, but the tone and voice of the novels I'm working on in parallel seem, to me, to be -very- different as is. Otoh, maybe if they weren't so different, I wouldn't have as much difficult picking up and re-establishing a certain sense of voice.

Is the side project SF, out of curiosity?

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I've actually gone back since and looked at the other two novels, and I think I'm past them at this point -- in other words, I could take the basic premise, most of the worldbuilding, the main characters, the thematic base, but I'd start back in from page one and begin changing some things wholesale. I'm not the same person I was when I wrote those, therefore I wouldn't make them the same book any more.

When I was doing the three-books-at-once juggling, two were sf and one was fantasy. Two different sub-genres didn't help me, as I said, it was the fantasy that ended up tugging at me the hardest and winking and acting seductively and whispering "hey lover, drop those other two and I'll make it worth your while..."

The side project is urband fantasy/magic realism -- very different from anything else I've written. Very different voice than what I'm currently writing -- and I think that would make it more difficult, not less so, to write simultaneously. For me, anyway.