Juggling multiple writing projects

As a freelance editor, I often have multiple projects to do. Usually I am able to do them one at a time, but sometimes a long-term project needs to get set aside so smaller rush projects can happen. I don't like multitasking anymore; my brain doesn't seem well suited for trying to hold a lot of information about different things if I don't have to. That is certainly true of my editing work. I count on my brain holding a lot of factual information in the interim memory: spellings of names from earlier pages, amounts of money, uses of conventional punctuation. And if I work on more than one project, it confuses that memory, which seems to have only one track.

In my creative writing, I like to have one project going at a time. That keeps those characters in my mind, those stories in the hopper, as it were, to tumble and polish and resolve themselves. But I find myself working on three books at once at the moment. I've decided to self-publish my first novel this fall; I'm working on a small book on creativity and long-term sobriety that I'd like to publish in December, and novel #3, with its full first draft completed in August, is waiting for me to come back to it.

I'm having to compartmentalize my energies in a way that isn't all that comfortable. So I'm making a big list of smaller tasks for each project and focusing on one task at a time, rather than one project at a time. This week I focused on formatting Novel #1 and making some final revisions so that I could send it to friends and colleagues for advance reviews. Now I'm turning my attention back to the Creativity book.

There's an impatience in me to get back to Novel #3 but it's a good lesson for me in one task at a time.

The changing face of books

I'm getting novel #1 ready to self-publish. I'm planning on using CreateSpace, through amazon, and having both a Kindle version and a paperback version. So in addition to working with the edits from my proofreader and some ideas from an early reader about one of my main characters, I'm also trying to sort out copy for the cover.

I have a title I really like and I've painted an image and scanned it for the cover. It's the back cover that has me stumped. I know I want a blurb, a brief description of the story that will entice the reader to buy and read but do I put a bio on the back with a picture or do I get some advance readers to give me comments?

I personally don't read a lot of reviews. I read the first pages of books and make my buying and reading decision on that and on the blurb. I find out from the blurb if it's a subject/story that interests me and I find out from the first page if I like the author's writing style. That's more important to me than what someone else said. But when I've surveyed some of my writer friends for their opinion, all but one said do blurb and comments, and put the bio inside.

Now here's the changing face of books dilemma: my book is probably not going to end up in bookstores. With self-publishing, the bookstore route is difficult, tedious, and not profitable. Big chains won't take self-published books and independent bookstores will only take one at a time. So selling my book will be mostly on amazon. People won't pick the book up to read the cover. They'll see it on line.

The other way I'll sell books is at workshops and conferences and people will be interested if they heard me speak and liked me, not what others said about me on the back of the cover.

So what to do? Any thoughts from you readers?

My muse

I attended a wonderful workshop on poetry as therapy this weekend with John Fox, author of Poetic Medicine and Finding What You Didn't Lose. In addition to writing some good poems and hearing some great ones, I met a whole new sisterhood of writers. I am so lucky!

Here is one I wrote about my muse.

A heaviness comes
unbidden, unannounced.
A hot breath
on the side of my neck.
A huff, a growl
so low, so tender
so familiar
that my cells turn
as I sleep.
And the dreamtime
turns gold and red.
And the scent of huckleberries
and hot pine pitch
and the coming cave
lie over me like down.
And when I wake,
there is a sharp knowing
at the third eye
that her claw
has penetrated
my is and will be.

Anachronisms: Sorting out technology in fiction

As I close in on publication of my first novel, I sent it to a trusted friend for a final proofreading. She found a few things but even more importantly, she brought up the issue of technology and a time-setting for the book.  I wrote this book in 2008-2009 about three people in their late 30s/early 40s. It was set in 2006 and includes the technology I myself was using then, not necessarily the technology others might be using.

In the book, I have the following:

• Characters using email
• Characters using answering machines
• Characters using cell phones and land lines
• Characters passing along information on a slip of paper (a phone number) [instead of telling someone to look it up on the web]
• Characters looking up information on the web
• Characters leaving each other notes on a door or a car
• Characters writing love letters to each other through snail mail
• No characters are texting
• An artist sending images on a CD to a gallery
• Same artist has a web site
• Main character has a CD collection

Jan argued that I need to rethink all of these things or set the time back 8-10 years. It poses an interesting dilemma. Which of these are anachronisms? Which of these are characters' idiosyncracies? (I know both young and older people who collect vinyl records). So I will go in and look at all these places.

Something to consider as we write. 

Winding up your effort

Last weekend I took a vacation with my family over to Eastern Oregon and while they watched football in the afternoons, I did a final edit on my first novel. I wrote this book in 2008-2009 and haven't really looked at it since. I pitched it to some agents at a conference in 2010 with no luck, and the agent who signed me up for my second novel last summer wasn't really interested in this first book either. So I set it aside. But now I've decided to self-publish it. I'd like to get it out into the world. What's more, I'd like to have it complete instead of on hold.

It was interesting to read it again. It is so familiar to me; I created these characters and their stories after all. And yet I'd forgotten some things. I also could very plainly see how much better a writer I've become in the last three years and for several moments I was tempted to do some major revisions. But the truth is, this story doesn't interest me all that much now. I'm glad I wrote it. I think it's a very good romance. And an unusual one as it's told from the man's point of view. But I am done with it and have already moved on. Sort of like running into an old boyfriend. You still have affection for him but you don't want to spend much time with him.

So for better or worse, I'm done with it. The manuscript has now moved on to a final proofreader. I've asked her to note anything egregious but other than that I'm complete.

An experience of creative grace

This past Tuesday, I went to my painting studio in the morning. I'd been fighting a cold and didn't have much energy but I had left a painting unfinished on Sunday morning and I didn't want to lose the ideas that I had for it. The building was quiet--most of the other artists who use this cooperative warren of studio spaces come later in the day. I put on my headphones and went happily to work finishing a big floral piece.

But this only took about 40 minutes and I felt at loose ends. I didn't want to start another big piece because I didn't have the energy for it and yet I didn't want to leave yet. My eye landed on some photos I'd taken off the web, and I was in such a who-cares-what-happens place that I got out some pencils and chalks and old paper and sat down to see what would happen.

The photos are of split-rail fences and came off the website of two guys who build such fences in North Carolina. Over the last couple of years, I've had several photos of split-rail fences, some of the photos quite artistic, but none of them were what I had in mind and I couldn't seem to assemble those images into the picture that I have wanted.

In 2009, I finished my first novel. In the opening chapter, the main character, Jake, is watching his friend Paul and a group of students weave yards of colored silk into a split-rail fence in rural Virginia. I wanted some version of that fence, that meadow, those woods on my cover and I wanted to create that myself. I had found a couple of possibilities and done maybe a dozen small drawings but nothing worked.

And as I sat there on Tuesday, the first version I drew was awful. That isn't modesty talking. It was awful. But I didn't care and the composition had something going for it, so I turned the paper over and changed to some different chalks and it began to work in an amazing and effortless way. I suddenly "knew" how to make the fence look like the fence. I don't know where the knowing came from. It just seemed to drop into my body.

I also knew I needed to do it again and on black paper this time. I had only a black backing for a pad of already used paper and I tore that off and sat down and in about 10 minutes, I had the cover art for my book. It was a breath-taking experience of creative grace.

Reducing anxiety in your creative life

Listening to a podcast by Eric Maisel this morning, I was struck by a statement he made that the act of choosing almost always provokes anxiety. His example was choosing a bagel over oatmeal and all of our mental ideas about which is healthier, more fattening, etc. I resonated both with the example and the idea of choosing as anxiety-provoker and I thought about how much anxiety there is around choosing to write or do other creative endeavors.

When we think about sitting down to write, to choose to do that, anxiety gets provoked in many of us. Is this the best use of my time? Is it a frivolous use of my time? What if I don't produce anything good? What if I don't have any ideas? Something potentially quite pleasurable becomes a source of tremendous discomfort.

This anxiety gets eliminated if you write every day. If you have a commitment to sit down and write something, there is no choosing, hence no anxiety. There may still be judgement about what you write, but there isn't any anxiety about doing it. You just do it.

So consider whether a solid commitment and practice of writing or other creative endeavor might reduce anxiety for you.