Welcome to the Blogging A to Z Challenge, where, this month, I'll be focusing on all things writing. This may be a random jumping around of topics within my theme, but hopefully something somewhere will be useful to someone. (V is for vague - see that last sentence.) Check out all the participants here . Now, lets get on with today's letter.
J is for Juggling Projects
When the ideas come to fast to finished one thing before jumping to the next, how does one handle that?
I'd like to say that I only ever work on one story at a time because it would make me sound all organized, but that really just isn't the case. I do have one main project I try to stick with at a time, but there are usually a couple secondary things bouncing around in my head. And hey! Look! A Sparkly chicken! Darn ideas, are always popping up.
The best way I've found to manage them is to jot those ideas down, either in a computer file - which I do attempt to be organized and have an ideas folder on my hard drive - or in a notebook. The notebook is what a lot of people tell me they use. I have a lot of notebooks. While that sounds like I should be all good then, I'm not. I have a lot of notebooks and I have no idea what is in most of them. Rather than spend an aggravating couple days flipping through (Because I have done that and I'm not a pleasant person when I can't find something), those notebooks for the idea/ending/outline/note to self/ character idea / that one cool name I don't want to forget / etc, I'm sooooo much better off just creating a file for it and naming whatever it is and then hitting save. I know where those things are and can just search on my computer for them if it comes down to that.
Back to the juggling. I usually have a project in progress, one I've just finished that I'm contemplating edits for, and a new one or unfinished one that I'm pondering and gathering ideas for. And still, one of those sparkly chickens will hit me now and then. If it's a short story and I'm in the middle of a novel, I'm not opposed to taking a couple days off to get that story down - assuming I have it mostly formed in my head. If it's going to take days to drag out the first half and require a good deal of research, it goes into the ideas file for later.
Working on multiple things at once isn't a terrible thing, but do try to focus on finishing one of those things before diving headfirst into the next big thing. You'll feel a lot more accomplished.
How many projects do you prefer to work on at once?
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