Projects: Organization

I mentioned yesterday on Facebook how I’m one of those writers who constantly has an abundance of projects going at once even though I only have 1-2 main projects per year. This not only keeps me productive, but it means I constantly have different manuscripts in different states of completion. It’s also the reason some years I’ll only put out 1-2 books, and other years 3-5 come out. No – I’m not really writing all of that in a year’s time (even though I easily write hundreds of thousands of words a year). I have projects I’ve been working on for years that are inching closer to done day-by-day. A lot of people can’t keep up with me. Other writers accuse me of overproducing and think that the longer it takes to write something the better it is. ::shrug::

All I know is I have always had a great deal of creative energy and I funnel it into my writing.  So the fact that I have two novellas and two novels in the works (plus one re-write) doesn’t overwhelm or phase me like it might some writers. The fact that I have three NF in progress at the moment (on top of the rest of it) is normal for me. No – it doesn’t cause me to fall into a stalemate. No – it doesn’t cause me to never complete anything like it might some folks. Instead – having an abundance of projects keeps my momentum going. I am NEVER at a loss for what to write because my brain is constantly churning out outlines and stories. I keep files full of book outlines and novel ideas.  Not all of them are acted upon. Not all of them are good ideas. Sometimes they sit until I feel inspired to work on them.

Not all writers are alike.  We’re not all created equally. Some of us are naturally very prolific and need a multitude of projects going to keep us on task. Others can’t work on more than one project at a time. Some writers can produce 2-4 books a year. Other writers can only manage 1 book every other year. I’d say the average writer produces 1-2 books a year. One of my favorite authors writes about 3 a year (2 series with one pen name and one series with a co-author).  I can only manage 1-2 novels a year, but I still find I’m able to put out 1-2 NF a year, too. The novellas are what I work on in between the big projects. Training Amy was actually supposed to be a short novella, believe it or not. It ended up being 5000 words short of a novel and I probably could have continued on with it, but I was already past my deadline by two months so I had to end it. I plan on taking as much time with Switched as the story needs. I don’t like rushing stories or trying to encapsulate them into a word count. Live and learn. If I’ve learned anything from my first erotic romance novellas – that was it. Don’t try to force a story into a word count. Readers will notice it and some of them won’t be too happy about it. If it means the story has to be released at a later time – that’s what it means.

Okay – enough blabbing from me. Now let’s all go do something productive! 🙂