I suxxorz at both Nano and fake Nano. I don't know why, but every single time I think I have life in hand and can do one, something explodes, burning both my writing time and my muse to cinders. I do not know how to manage my life. I need to hire someone to manage my life.
MsJudy said:
That's the part where my head always gets all freaked out by this business. There's more to it than just writing a good book. You have to write a good book that someone believes is marketable. I always doubt my ideas... I mean, it sounds like a great story to me, but... Will it sell?
I know, I know. Write what you love, write the book you want to write, etc. But when you have more than one idea to work on, you have to decide where to focus your time. And that's hard when you don't know what everyone is looking for!
I want to strangle myself. I did this months ago. I have two MG books in my head, and I had to pick one to focus on. I feel like both are fairly grabbing premises, both in slightly (as of yet) under-represented settings. I decided one of them was more marketable than the other, so I started working on it exclusively. This morning, I was looking at one of those blogs that critique your logline or query or whatever, and there's one up that is almost exactly what my other book (the one I put aside for now) is going to be about--same special niche, same general plotline, same MC character name, same supporting character type... Now I'm all flighty because if she's getting critiques, then she already has this thing written. If she gets it repped and gets it published and it does well, then I'm screwed.
*Sigh*
I still feel like the book I picked to do first is still a more marketable concept, but I can't help but feeling like I've now missed my chance with the other... like someone else is going to get there first because I put it off and "steal my slot."
Nikki said:
Ms. Judy - you're right. It's so hard to decide where to spend your energy. I stopped watching all television, for real, a few years back. That's cleared up enough time for me to finish quite a few manuscripts a year. I know a few other published authors who point to this as their key to productivity as well.
Nooooooo!!! Don't tell me I'll do better if I give up TV! That's harsh. Lol. I already gave up cable so as to cut back, but, gah, none at all? What was the process like? Did you have withdrawals? How do you stay up with popular culture?
I find I'm not very good at saying"no" to any idea. So I pretty much write them all, in order, if they seem to have all the requisite parts to be a novel, and they seem middle-grade-ish. (I'm most drawn to MG, and it seems to be considered a good career decision to stay in one genre/area for a while. We'll see!) It's coming in handy just now, having a bunch of MSs sitting on the hard drive... but not all of them are good, by any means. But any writing is good writing, for the practice at least, I think.
I wish I could write everything that pops in my mind. It would be so nice to have a stack of MSs ready to polish should I get an agent, and then I'd have something in hand that says, "Why yes, I am prolific."
If Fate smiles on me, I plan to stay in MG until my audience has grown up. Then I'm going to start writing YA, with a few MG stories tossed in here and there as they come to me. I had MG authors I loved and who I wish wrote older things that I could have finished growing up with, you know?