Juggling multiple projects

[sarillia]

How do you handle this? Do you work on one thing at a time or are you always working on several? Do you have one dominant one and other ones you add to on the side or is your time split equally among them?

I'm about to start Camp NaNoWriMo next week and I'm not sure if I will be done with my current project before then, so I'm trying to decide what I should do.

There are a lot of aspects of writing where I feel like I've figured out what works best for me after a lot of experimenting. This is not one of them. I can think of times when seeing one project through to the end worked well and other times when alternating between several served me well. I guess I tend to go back and forth between those methods.

Comments

[inkdust]

I cannot, cannot, cannot multitask. I'm still struggling to accept this fact in my daily life for inconsequential things (like trying to read fandom secrets and watch tv at the same time) but for writing I do not fight this. I have to throw myself full-on into whatever I choose to work on, so only one project can occupy that place.

At the moment, I'm starting to play around with one of my next ideas while I wait for feedback on my finished draft, but I feel sure that as soon as I have more editing to do, the new idea will be pushed to the back burner again. I just get hyper-focused, and trying to split that between more than one thing doesn't work.

Have you noticed any pattern of what type of projects you were working on when you concentrated on one vs tackled several at once?

[sarillia]

I seem to be becoming more and more like you as time goes by. I used to be really good at multitasking but now I'm increasingly finding myself preferring a really deep focus on one thing.

I've been thinking about any kind of pattern there might be and I might have something. I think it's the projects where I felt like I knew what I was doing that I was able to work on several at once. The times when I hadn't done as much planning and I was figuring everything out as I went along were the ones that required me to focus more on them because I was trying to keep everything straight in my head.

[inkdust]

That makes a lot of sense. There's such a difference between having some kind of outline you feel sure about and working from one point to the next versus feeling like you're juggling a bunch of pieces that you have to keep adjusting and checking and questioning. I think I experience more of the latter.

[agilebrit]

It really depends on where I am in the process and what project I'm doing. I like to have one in writing and one in editing when I'm doing a "normal" process. But if I'm doing a short-story NaNo project, then I scribble madly, one first draft after the other, and then go to work on edits of two or three at a time, swapping over when my eyes start crossing or I get sick of looking at the thing.

But I write short fiction, so what I do might not cross over to longer works.

[sarillia]

I hadn't even thought about editing because I've only just started doing writing that I want to do something with instead of just writing it for the fun of experiencing the story. I'll probably go about it like you when I get to that point. Hard to say at this point though.

[ayumidah]

I have two fics that I write a chapter for a week. Then I have every other idea listed that I'd like to write.

So my writing schedule generally goes

Fic series 1
Fic series 2
Stories with deadlines
Oldest idea on the list

And then I just continue through the list until I run out of time, doing what I can as I go.

[sarillia]

I admire your dedication. I don't think I could be that consistent.

[ayumidah]

Haha and in a couple of weeks I'm adding in a third fic that will probably be updating weekly as well. Because I'm a masochist writer.

[perfectworry]

I usually juggle a bunch of projects, but none of them are srsnbsns, so that means no strict deadlines or outlining or even a whole hell of a lot of editing.

Usually during (Camp) NaNoWriMo, all other projects get put on the back burner not because of distractions or project confusion, but time. There just aren't enough hours in a day to bang out my 1,667 words and fiddle with short fics for my other projects, at least not during the work week.

[sarillia]

I don't worry about time. I have way too much of that on my hands and I write very quickly when I get into the right mood.

Speaking of Camp NaNo, are you doing that next month? I'm working on plotting my project for that.

[perfectworry]

I often don't have the time to write at all during the work week, between an eleven hour day (leave home at 7am, return home shortly before 6pm) and health problems. Which brings me to the Camp NaNo question, the answer to which is: I'm not sure. I think because Camp NaNo allows for wordcounts down to 10,000, I might participate and try to write (and edit) a short story that I can really feel proud of instead of just rushing to write 50,000 words.

[sarillia]

I also have health problems that get in the way but they have helped to keep me out of school for a while and I have no job so I have nothing but time. My output is actually kind of pathetic when you consider all the time I have. I've always wondered how things would change if I had a job. Hopefully I'll get a chance to find out before too long.