Trouble with organization

celticroots said:

Ok..so right now all of my attention is going to my WIP that I am almost halfway done with. It's a first draft. I also work on another first draft of a WIP when I run out of juice on first draft 1.

The good thing is, I can finish the stuff that I write (yay!) but I am also editing a short story I wrote, that I haven't gone back to. ( I need to continue editing said finished first draft of short story and rewrite.)

There are some other shorts that are taking up space that I haven't gotten around to editing yet.

Does Self-Editing for Fiction Writers cover editing shorts as well as novels?

Any tips on how I can get organized would be appreciated!

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I don't know anything about Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, but as far as organizing...

When I have multiple projects on the table (some short, some long, some in the first draft stage, some in the editing stage) I usually split up my "writing" time to handle the work load.

If possible I set aside about one third of my time to edit (because that usually takes less time for the volume of work being gone through than writing the first draft does). The rest goes into writing the under-construction material.

Personally, I try to write every day so I usually take two days out of the week and use them to edit, give myself a break from writing new stuff. But I have also split things up so that I write for an hour, then edit for half an hour. (For me it seems to work best to edit at the end of a writing session, but that's just me.)

My general rule of thumb about completing projects goes like this: I can work on as much as I want, as long as I'm making progress. If I stop making progress it's time to shelve some of the work for a week or two.