On Juggling

I'm coming to the conclusion that I need more discipline in sticking with projects, as I've been flitting from thing to thing lately like a butterfly on meth. I have my novel printed out and I've been making a lot of notes about it. What I really need to do, but don't like to admit I need to do, is put my pen down and read it straight through, then read it straight through again while making notes. I have also started two short stories I'm working on writing concurrently- one for a specific market and one I've just been banging away on when I don't feel I'm up to the first. It's fun, there are dream wolves.

And then on top of that I've also been going through my back catalogue of stories and sorting them into piles based on how much work they need. I've been surprised at some of the stories I found- really quite early ones, even- that only need superficial work, while some that I've always looked back on fondly I have, on closer inspection, decided to trunk as taking too much to fix. I've found old stories I had been content just to let sit as past experiments which, now that I read them through again, had some great, powerful ideas at their hearts. I've been making notes on these and putting them into a large achordian file under the labels "close", "partial rewrite", "total rewrite", and "trunk". I also have at least one of them I've been actively rewriting.

I've also also been managing the "business end", turning over submissions again as they get rejected, getting ready for the con, and managing the blog. I added some advertisements and a blogroll tool that I just love to death. (It's at the bottom right corner of the webpage, and it will continue to scroll through the blog and news posts of dozens of really great sites). And I've been reading articles about publishing, reading magazines, and listening to interviews with authors and editors. I'm in a face to face writing group I've and signed back up to a critique site.

This all looks like I've been very productive, but that's a trick of the light. Finishing one third of each of these things doesn't actually add up to any one thing completed. The last thing I finished, edited, and sent out was about a month ago.

I'm not exactly sure why it's been hard to pick one thing and stick to it lately. It's something I need to manage better, but I'm not sure it's something I need to stamp out entirely. When I'm beating my head against one thing, working on another measurably helps me clear out the blockage, especially in the first draft phase. Looking at multiple things to edit lets me prioritize and gives me insight for what I write in the future.

I can get all the balls up into the air. The question is, can I move fast enough and with enough dexterity not to drop them now?