Writing Time

As anyone who follows this blog knows, I love writing—fiction, especially. I jot down notes on my phone or my tablet or whatever piece of scratch paper comes to hand. I read obsessively for written Q&As and podcast interviews, for research and for fun, but I also read and re-read my own creations, especially when I’m in full flow. That whatever I just slung in the oven for dinner needs to wait while I revise the scene I finished right before coming downstairs, then upload it and remind myself in an email to copy the revised file before I work on it the next day and risk wiping out the changes.

Still, not all writing is the same. Followers of this blog will also know that I have three projects underway (this is unusual, even for me), and they are in different stages. Two months ago, I focused on the mid-range project, which still lacks an ending because I accepted a bunch of editing jobs before finishing and realized only after the fact that I didn’t have the mental energy to get back into Project 2 every day so I could figure out how to solve the plotting problem that plagued the finale. (Okay, I admit, not wanting to tackle said plotting problem also contributed to my pulling back from the novel as a whole.)

Project 1, in contrast, had reached the final stages, requiring only a reasonably complete Project 2 (cover reveal here!) to reach its endpoint—and that only because the two are closely connected, so any changes to 2 would need to be reflected in 1 and vice versa.

I took refuge in Project 3, which had the advantage of being so amorphous and under-researched that I could tackle an article or a map for 30 minutes at the end of the day and call it progress. I even started writing, producing a couple of rough and unformed chapters that will either morph into something richer or wind up in the electronic equivalent of the circular filing cabinet.

But this week I finally got back to Project 1. Six wonderfully under-scheduled days, including a long weekend, made it possible to do what I needed to do: go through the whole thing from beginning to end, responding to the comments of my writers’ group and then threading any changes through to the end. By Monday, I hope, I will have a next-to-final draft. Of course, I’ll read it once more to ensure no new inconsistencies crept in while fixing the old ones, but then it can move to the print formatting stage. And that— wouldn’t you know it?—fits neatly into those 30–60 minute slots at the end of the day.

Maybe then I can stop procrastinating and get back to that missing final chapter …