Seriously.
Just when you think you’re clear for smooth sailing ahead and can FINALLY finish your latest novel that has taken over a year to complete thanks to an extreme bout of procrastination (writer’s block), you get hit over the head with some awesome story idea that demands your every waking second until its completion.
Nothing specific, I’m just sayin’…
Okay, fine. Welcome to my world, folks. I’ll give you the Cole’s Notes version of my predicament. I’ve been dabbling in this racket since 2007 and have been writing everything from full out novels to 1000 word flash fictions. My first two novels (and only two at the moment) that I’ve written are the first two in a six book series. After completing the second book, I naïvely decided to “take a break” from that particularly arduous story and write a third standalone novel that had nothing to do with the series. Dismissing my wife’s prudent advice to not keep your readers waiting too long for the next book in a series, I went ahead and began what I thought would be a relatively quick and painless jaunt towards the completion of yet another novel.
Reality check.
The trouble was the ending to my cool juvenile fiction novel, or lack thereof. And, on top of it all, I had “misplaced” some crucial data relating to the ending of said novel that no amount of searching on all four of my hard drives would reveal. Hello writer’s block. What I had conservatively estimated would take 3-4 months has now taken twelve!
But I am happy to say that I fought through the enormous tidal wave of writer’s block and have planned out the ending to my third novel and am happily on my way to finishing it.
Enter new inspiration.
You see, I’m one of those people who just can’t compartmentalize all that well. I am a male, after all… I have severe tunnel vision. Multitasking, though I’ve just used it in this sentence, is not in my vocabulary. So, when I get an idea for something, what I believe to be a really good idea, I need to drop what I’m doing and take care of all the pertinent details or else risk losing valuable data and have no clue where to start when the time comes around to write the blooming thing.
Case in point: I’ve finally figured out the ending to my third novel, Splinters. But I’ve also been toying with the idea of doing an exclusive Twitter flash fiction story where every Friday I release a micro fiction segment of the story (started Friday, January 10th.) Every week a new couple of sentences until the story is done. The only place to find it is on Twitter. My idea recently came to fruition when I stumbled upon a convenient venue to market my story. Now, instead of completing my most recent novel, I’ve been planning out this new flash fiction story, which is going to be awesome, BTW!
However, as I’m writing this post, I guess things could be a lot worse. It’s not as though I’m fresh out of ideas after I finish this flash fiction/ Twitter story. I still have Splinters to finish in the meantime, then the next four books in my fantasy series, then at least six other really good ideas for stories that I simply can’t wait to sink my teeth into and transform into more books. So, yeah, how about I just shut the heck up and keep on keeping at it.
At least I’m busy. Here’s hoping that you are, too.
Cheers!