How I Write: One Story at a Time

 I like to focus in on one thing. Sometimes.

I had already started outlining book two while I was in discussions with my developmental editing team, and I set that aside to do a full rewrite of my book one to prepare it to send to them. I have kept all the outlining for the next book in its own document, and I have a separate notebook devoted to notes and ideas that I want to include in that book, but I have stopped working on it entirely, because I need to focus on making book one as clean and crisp as I can.

Not everyone does that.  Not everyone can do that.  Some people work better when they have multiple things happening at once. 

And so do I, in other parts of my life. I rarely sit and just watch TV. I look at Instagram, I look at Discord, I look at Facebook.  I play games on my tablet. I read.

But when it comes to writing, I can’t think of two full plotlines at once.  I am unable to work on an outline for a future book at the same time I’m writing another. Besides, what if I make a life-changing decision in book one that impacts book two? I feel like it would be a huge waste of time to keep prodding and poking at my plotlines until I know for sure that book one is as set in stone as I can make it.

Things do come to me, and I give them enough headspace to write them down in as much detail as possible in the notebook, but then I must let them go.

I want to live in my story as much as possible. I go to sleep thinking about what I’ll be editing/rewriting the next day.  I wake up thinking about what will need to be done to clean up the scenes I need to work on that day. I eat my lunch with thoughts fluttering around in my head about what I did the day before. As I’ve said before, my characters have minds of their own, and maybe something I wrote yesterday will impact what I’m going to work on today.  I need to remember it.

I do look forward to moving into brand new writing. Hell, I have a whole other series in the back of my head, that picks up the magic system from this series and brings it into the present day. I have a notebook for that, too. It gets written in from time to time. And then I close it and put it out of my head.

I don’t know how other people do it.

Then again, other people wonder how I can watch TV and read at the same time.

We all have our strengths.