Saturday, February 23, 2008

By Request part 2

Janet asked how I keep the books separate in my head when I'm working on simultaneous projects.
This depends on what the projects are. It's easier if they are totally different in nature. For example I'm currenty working on Animal Instincts which is romantic comedy, first person, chic lit style and All She Ever Wanted (naff title) which is third person, womens fiction, totally different style.
To give an example:
Sat - write 1k on AI and 500wds ASEW
Sun - finish chap of AI send to Jess, my cp.
Mon - think about AI and add some layers to earlier chapters.
Tue - Work on first chapter of ASEW
Fri - edit returned chapter of AI from Jess and write 500 words of AI

This was this week, slower pace than usual as I've just returned to work but you can see I move in and out of the two projects.

If the projects are similar then I separate the workload. I'll complete one chapter on project A and send it to Jess then the folowing week i'll complete a chapter of project B and so on until finished.

Keep the questions coming.

1 comment:

Janet Ch said...

This is is so interesting. Do you plan in advance what you need to tackle for the coming week or did you just do the plan on your blog to show us the variety over one week?

I've never thought of doing weekly or even long term planning but it makes a lot of sense. You can work out the date you expect your story to be finished, and provided you set yourself attainable goals, there's no reason why you shouldn't make the target. It beats just writing what you can each day with no word target in mind!

Do you outline your stories in detail before you write them (so you know exactly where you are going)or do you fly into the mist then maybe ditch big chunks of what you have becaise it's not working?

I'm wondering where stuff that doesn't work fits into the long term plan. Do you build in time for rewriting?