Confession: I still believe I can multi-task when countless experts have said it’s terrible for output. (Cal Newport’s DEEP WORK moved me to disavow some of my more insidious multi-tasking behaviors.) But I’ve always done things my own way and am loathe to change habits that make me happy, as multi-tasking and distracting as they are.
So, I’m finishing the first draft of a YA auto-fiction (four scenes to go!) and preparing for the revision, am starting to gain momentum on the super sekret YA project I started drafting by accident last winter (LOL), and then, of course, I woke up one day last week with a fully formed new idea that is threatening to take over everything. Isn’t that how it always goes.
Project A is the hardest one (being wrought from my past and things I’ve repressed or tried to forget).
Project B is loose and fast and just springs up in the moment and I write it in quick bursts of inspiration.
Project C has got a voice and an intent and is shocking me a bit because it’s not like anything I’ve ever written before.
All of these ideas have been cooking away in my skull until I was ready to write. I’ve had a couple of traumatic events stop me from any creative efforts in the past decade. If you asked me 10 years ago to write a YA novel, I would have wished I could and would have tried so hard, but would have not been able to. I’m so aware of how much more creative power I have this year. It feels so good. It shows me I’m doing better this year than I was doing a decade ago. I’ve continued showing up (even when I don’t feel like it’s doing anything) for a slow and steady (albeit long) recovery process. I felt so frustrated for so many years that I couldn’t just do what I watched others do. I wrote countless partial drafts and then gave up. I filled up massive Scrivener files, forgot to back them up, and lost them to old laptops. I know, I know. But I don’t give up easily, so whatever I’ve lost, I know I will get back in a good way.
My one multi-tasking habit that I simply can’t give up is having more than one writing project going. I just can’t quit this. James Cameron did this while writing The Abyss, Titanic, and Avatar. The key is a designated place to store the material for each project. For me, three Scrivener files (backed up to the cloud this time), plus a half a dozen yellow legal pads, and my trusty Alphasmart Neo, which is perfect for a multi-tasker like me, because it can store materials for up to eight projects. Whenever I need to pull the words from it, I plug it into my Mac and download everything quickly. It’s portable, camping-proof, and can replace the yellow legal pad scribbling in a pinch when the story rushes out too fast for my handwriting to keep up.
I always start with Project A (as I said, it’s the hardest) because I just need to get the story out on the page. I write the hardest scenes I’ve ever written and then remember that I’ll experience a therapeutic flashback (I will always have emotional flashbacks while writing auto-fiction, but if I know what I’m going to get and I remember it is supposed to be cathartic, I can anticipate the flashback, work through it, and then continue on my recovery. See, I’ve learned a ton in the past decade about how this might work). Plus, I can’t write stories unless they have that very personal connection that I can make art from (turning my heartbreak and trauma into something beautiful).
Project B and C are interchangeable now. When I get an idea for one of them, I go and work on it a bit. At least 500 words a day on each (usually done before work while walking on my treadmill or after work, while hanging out with my family).
It’s working for me again in 2023. I’m making big leaps of progress versus teeny motions of the past decade. How’s your writing going?
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