stephaniecain | Projects, Projects Everywhere, and Not a Page to Submit

My best friend in high school always told me I had too many dreams. I wanted to fly helos for the Air Force. I wanted to be an archaeologist. I wanted to be an FBI agent. I wanted to write novels. I wanted to act. I wanted to sing. I wanted to be a cowgirl. My mother, of course, told me that it was good to have that many dreams. Problem was, I ended up majoring in history & creative writing, learning a virtually unemployable skill set. Maybe my best friend was closer to being correct than my mom was. Or maybe it wasn’t that I had too many dreams, but that I couldn’t pick one of those dreams to focus on first.

Something I’ve seen as I read blogs about the publishing world is that a writer should focus on one particular area of writing to make her name. (Never mind that Isaac Asimov published fiction and nonfiction in every single category of the Dewey Decimal system, apparently this isn’t as doable in the 21st Century as it was in the 1950s.) Since I have written epic fantasy, urban fantasy, romance, and crime fiction…this is a problem.

My current dilemma is that my urban fantasy is closest to being ready for publication, plus having three sequels/companion novels written/drafted so I need to revise that one. But I am way more in the mood to work on the epic fantasy, which needs to be completely overhauled and re-WRITTEN from the ground up. A huge project, but especially since I started using Patricia C. Wrede’s world-building questions to inspect and tweak my fantasy world, it’s one I look forward to.

I’ve tried using a bribe to move forward. I’ve told myself to revise the first 50 pages of the urban fantasy, just so I have a good submission packet to query with. Then I can turn my attention to the epic fantasy and make a few submission rounds with the urban fantasy to see if I get any interest. If I get any interest and they want a full manuscript, then I make a really fast revision of the other 100 pages.

We’ll see if this works…

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Jillian, the short answer to that is no. Not a method. I don't know any two writers who write in the same way. It all depends on the project.

Revisions, if they're due back quickly, then it can be 12-14 hour days, or until my back and eyes can't take it. Deadlines can be that way, too.

When I start a book, I write about 5 - 7 pages per day, 7 days a week. After the midpoint, I'm usually at 10ppd, and in the race to the finish it's 15-20. Mostly, I take no days off while I'm in a book. But some days I don't write at all. Usually when I realize I've made a wrong turn in my plotting. I then have to do other things so my subconscious can work out where I screwed up and how to fix it.

It's an imperfect system that tends to be the same for me now that I've written for so many years. But I write genre fiction, my books are about 250 ms pages. I need to write 4 to 5 books per year. It's my only income, so there's not a lot of wiggle room.

It also took me a long time to come to this "system" and it's changed a lot over the years. It's unique, as every writer's methods is unique. I had to try a lot of stuff that didn't work to get here.

As far as having a life, I don't have a huge one. I play with the dogs, talk to my LJ friends, my housemate, twitter every day. But I don't see many movies or go many places. When I'm not writing, I do whatever I can to have fun, but it's not a balanced life. For me, it works, and it's comfortable. I know people who write full time and really do have full lives. With husbands/kids whatever. I have no idea how they do that. Although come to think of it, most of them have a second income in their family.

hey, thank you for taking the time to describe this for me. I've done my fair share of hit & miss (mostly miss) experimentation so having your insight gives a pretty good picture of where I still fall short. *chuckles*

I took about 8 months away from working in insurance to see what I could learn on my own. Well, I learned a lot--enough to know I don't have all the pieces to make it work let alone 'comfortable.' Nonetheless I'm going to keep building on what I've gained and see what happens.

My biggest problems were that I increased my volunteer hours (which I don't consider wasted--but definitely caused me to drift from the complete 'work day' of writing) and spacing out when I didn't have an immediate deadline to work toward. I knew those choices weren't adding up to 'professional author'... all that to say, living on savings at least taught me how to wear a tight belt and socializing took a nose dive.

I'd love to ask you more sometime!

(sorry for hijacking your journal, Steph! Good conversation starter. *grin*)

LOL I'm all for journal-hijacking if it's going to result in this! :)

I'm working on this scheduling thing right now with the novel that

jl_decker and I are co-writing (yes, Jolie, that's my partner in crime - haha - from the fandom I don't mention here). We're starting to be more structured on the time we spend writing original fiction, though of course our fanfic output has also gone way downhill. But I'm working on teaching her how to be strict. *G* "Your husband doesn't get to talk to you for this hour, this is WRITING HOUR. Tell him to come back later. I don't care if he's hungry. You have peanut butter."

*cough*

Excellent about you and jl_decker! You guys write so well together. And yes, structured time is your friend. :)

Projects, Projects Everywhere, and Not a Page to Submit

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