Deciding to cut back

Once upon a time, I wrote a series called Woven. I wrote the first book, Broken Patterns, and started trying to sell it.

Then, I wrote the second book, Starting Chains, which sat at my desk for a while because I hadn’t sold Broken Patterns yet.

I was really irritated while I was waiting for a publisher to buy Broken Patterns. I am not good at waiting and wanted some (sort of) instant gratification. I had also found that several other writers did serialize stories on their blogs.

So I decided to write one.

What came out of that was Station 86.

It was supposed to be a quick thing. I intended to write each episode by itself, like a short story.

As you might be aware, that’s not how that worked.

Station 86 has blossomed into a whole series. I cannot write anything episodically, even if that’s how I post it. I have to write the whole story at once.

There are very few problems with this. I’ve been blessed with not only one series that I love to write, but two.

The only problem is me.

I want to do too many things at once. For a long time, longer than I want to admit, I was working on both series at the same time. I was, most days, writing ten pages of a rough draft, then turning around and typing out three to five pages on a second draft.

This was freaking crazy!

It was getting to the point where I was more concerned with getting the writing done than doing it. I was always down on myself because I always felt like I was behind.

Worse, the writing wasn’t fun anymore.

So, I’ve slowed down. I’m making myself only work on one project at a time.

It might mean that some projects come out later than I was hoping, but not by much. To be honest, now that I’m just working on one project, I can get more done in a day than I used to.

It also means that I’m not rushing anymore. I’m enjoying the process, and I think the writing’s better because of it.

I hope you think so, too.