October Novel Prep Challenge

I've worked on two projects at once before, and I'm doing the same this year. I like it because I can change projects back and forth and feel like I've had a "rest" even though I'm still turning out words. Then there is the issue of bleed-through - if the projects are complementary, then this can be an advantage. However, if the projects require very different approaches, then flipping back and forth may be damaging.

For example, my two projects this year are "Silver Tongue" (a re-telling of Treasure Island) and "Fragments", a fantasy adventure about a disparate group of natives fighting to reclaim their homeland. Since my goal is to have both first drafts completed by the end of the year, I initially planned to write them one after the other. But as I'm working through the outline tasks, I'm seeing more and more points of similarity between the two. Not in subject matter or setting, but in tone, narrative voice and pacing. And the places where the stories differ give me strong contrasts to work with - the fates of the characters, their antagonists, and how their personalities develop.

On the other hand, "Silver Tongue" needs a lot of real-world research, and I'm making sure that I keep that separate from my invented history for "Fragments". In that respect, I am trying to keep the stories apart, and so far, so good. And you are quite right about the dangers of distraction. You can spend so much time perfecting the hand-over manoeuvre that you never run more than a couple of yards at a time. Striking the balance is hard, but can be very rewarding.

As for collaboration: I've tried working with other writers in the past, but the projects have always fizzled out with unanswered emails and collaborative documents lying untouched for months. And that's a shame, because we had some good ideas going in some of those stories. It's good to hear of cases where it's working out, especially over such a large distance. All the best with the next few months!

Kell Willsen
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