This is brilliant! I have been toying with the idea of working on two projects at once and this is just the push I needed! One idea I had was to switch up my writing methods, for ex to use my laptop for one, then freewrite or voice to text for another, but the reality is I am so much more comfortable on my macbook than anywhere else! I think your little tricks will help loads. How many projects do you typically work on at once? and are you drafting more than one project at the same time, or is it more of a drafting/editing juggle?
Oh gosh, I am typically actively drafting more than one while ALSO editing things under contract or that I want to sell.
But I don’t see it as “working on them at once” so much as “work on this for a day, work on that for two weeks, work on this for five days, now that for a week.” With that approach, I’ve worked on at least 10 different projects this year. Probably more, I’m just losing count. My brain really thrives with the variety. 😅 And to be clear, 2 of the 10+ were contracted books with only edits left, and the other 8+ were drafting (and if I got far enough along into them, I turned to editing them as well).
I have already finished one new book this year and done edits with my editor on it. And I’m on track to have a second new book finished + edited by the end of the year. (I’m also hoping I can get a third book finished in the drafting phase—it’s close! And certainly I’ll have written enough new words across multiple projects to have filled many books. 😉)
Oooh, I'm going to have to try different fonts! I don't swap projects as aggressively as you do, but I tend to pass them off when I near the end of an act (I think this is an indicator that I don't properly plan my act breaks to coincide with character arc!) so if I'm doing a novella, that might be a week, and if it's an epic fantasy, probably about a month.
I also find it's important for me to write my scene screenplays in the right POV/voice. When I first started giving myself permission to swap between projects right away (instead of my usual approach where I'd be stuck on one thing for a couple of weeks then pick up the new and shiny fun thing), I went from a third person project to an EXISTING first person project, outlined the scene, drafted it, then about 3 hours later realised why drafting it had felt so weird. Yup, I drafted it in third and couldn't get my protagonist's voice right because *I had already drafted 30k words of her in first person*. I had this problem for a few days, then swapped to outlining the scene in first person in the character's voice, and that fixed it.
I do something similar to the playlists, but I often land on ONE piece of music for a book. When I was outlining the book I'm currently editing, I listened to a single 3ish-minute instrumental piece ON REPEAT for hours a day. When I got the book back from my editor guess what I listened to to get me back in the headspace?
Oh wow, ONE piece of music. Clearly I'm someone who needs constant change, so I think I'd actually combust if I could only hear one piece on repeat. (Just listening to Disney soundtracks so much with the kiddo has made me hate EVERY DISNEY SONG EVER.) But I love that that works FOR YOU. We gotta do what we gotta do!
And I too am definitely am someone who also shifts with acts too! It depends on the book, but I usually get to at least the end of Act 1, if not the midpoint, and then I lose steam in my first draft. Which means the files goes onto my hard drive for me to pick at when I have time or am feeling that particular voice/vibe again.
Yeah, tbh it's a good thing my husband's office is on the far side of the house so he didn't have to also listen to one piece of music for 8 hours in a row. For a week. But it does help because I end up strongly associating a single piece of music with, well, everything in the book.
I usually have one song or a short playlist that I use to get me into the right headspace for the day and then change it up afterward. But I did have one 30-minute soundtrack that I listened to (according to amazon) hundreds of times while drafting a short story and then when I started making it a novel.
I hadn’t realized that I do this 😂 I wrote a contemporary fully in Helvetica and use serif for my fantasy drafts. I need to lean more into moodboards, as I think they would help me more. So cool to see yours!
The fonts thing is so key! I spend ages picking the perfect font. For example, in a book where a Queen features prominently, I had to pick a font with a pretty Q. It's the weirdest thing. But now with Google fonts and all their filtering and font weight options, it's so fun to do it!
This is brilliant! I have been toying with the idea of working on two projects at once and this is just the push I needed! One idea I had was to switch up my writing methods, for ex to use my laptop for one, then freewrite or voice to text for another, but the reality is I am so much more comfortable on my macbook than anywhere else! I think your little tricks will help loads. How many projects do you typically work on at once? and are you drafting more than one project at the same time, or is it more of a drafting/editing juggle?
Oh gosh, I am typically actively drafting more than one while ALSO editing things under contract or that I want to sell.
But I don’t see it as “working on them at once” so much as “work on this for a day, work on that for two weeks, work on this for five days, now that for a week.” With that approach, I’ve worked on at least 10 different projects this year. Probably more, I’m just losing count. My brain really thrives with the variety. 😅 And to be clear, 2 of the 10+ were contracted books with only edits left, and the other 8+ were drafting (and if I got far enough along into them, I turned to editing them as well).
I have already finished one new book this year and done edits with my editor on it. And I’m on track to have a second new book finished + edited by the end of the year. (I’m also hoping I can get a third book finished in the drafting phase—it’s close! And certainly I’ll have written enough new words across multiple projects to have filled many books. 😉)
Oooh, I'm going to have to try different fonts! I don't swap projects as aggressively as you do, but I tend to pass them off when I near the end of an act (I think this is an indicator that I don't properly plan my act breaks to coincide with character arc!) so if I'm doing a novella, that might be a week, and if it's an epic fantasy, probably about a month.
I also find it's important for me to write my scene screenplays in the right POV/voice. When I first started giving myself permission to swap between projects right away (instead of my usual approach where I'd be stuck on one thing for a couple of weeks then pick up the new and shiny fun thing), I went from a third person project to an EXISTING first person project, outlined the scene, drafted it, then about 3 hours later realised why drafting it had felt so weird. Yup, I drafted it in third and couldn't get my protagonist's voice right because *I had already drafted 30k words of her in first person*. I had this problem for a few days, then swapped to outlining the scene in first person in the character's voice, and that fixed it.
I do something similar to the playlists, but I often land on ONE piece of music for a book. When I was outlining the book I'm currently editing, I listened to a single 3ish-minute instrumental piece ON REPEAT for hours a day. When I got the book back from my editor guess what I listened to to get me back in the headspace?
Oh wow, ONE piece of music. Clearly I'm someone who needs constant change, so I think I'd actually combust if I could only hear one piece on repeat. (Just listening to Disney soundtracks so much with the kiddo has made me hate EVERY DISNEY SONG EVER.) But I love that that works FOR YOU. We gotta do what we gotta do!
And I too am definitely am someone who also shifts with acts too! It depends on the book, but I usually get to at least the end of Act 1, if not the midpoint, and then I lose steam in my first draft. Which means the files goes onto my hard drive for me to pick at when I have time or am feeling that particular voice/vibe again.
Yeah, tbh it's a good thing my husband's office is on the far side of the house so he didn't have to also listen to one piece of music for 8 hours in a row. For a week. But it does help because I end up strongly associating a single piece of music with, well, everything in the book.
I usually have one song or a short playlist that I use to get me into the right headspace for the day and then change it up afterward. But I did have one 30-minute soundtrack that I listened to (according to amazon) hundreds of times while drafting a short story and then when I started making it a novel.
I hadn’t realized that I do this 😂 I wrote a contemporary fully in Helvetica and use serif for my fantasy drafts. I need to lean more into moodboards, as I think they would help me more. So cool to see yours!
The fonts thing is so key! I spend ages picking the perfect font. For example, in a book where a Queen features prominently, I had to pick a font with a pretty Q. It's the weirdest thing. But now with Google fonts and all their filtering and font weight options, it's so fun to do it!