One of the biggest challenges authors face is deciding where to devote their time and energy.
You might have five ideas for books and don’t know where to start. You might have a messy revision to tackle when a bright and shiny idea for a new novel appears.
How do you decide what to focus on?
I always recommend that authors follow their instincts and energy. If one project just can’t be ignored, go with that feeling. But sometimes it’s not so simple. You might have two or more projects you feel equally excited about. This can quickly result in paralysis while you wait for clarity.
Don’t flip a coin. Put the horses in a race to see who wins.
Let the games begin
During the pandemic, I let myself get creatively paralyzed.
I had one finished novel and was stuck waiting for feedback during the height of the shutdown. I wasn’t sure whether to get started on a sequel or whether to go off in a completely different direction. Instead of pushing through on something, anything, I went into a deep creative funk.
Then, finally, I had two ideas I was excited about almost simultaneously. The first I wrangled into a rough Young Adult short story, and I knew it was the genesis for a future novel. The other was a Middle Grade novel idea that needed a whole lot of fleshing out.
I couldn’t decide between them. But rather than letting myself get stuck, I put both horses in a race to see which one would win my enthusiasm.
One week I’d work on the YA idea. The next week I worked on the Middle Grade idea. I alternated for several months and gauged my excitement levels.
The Middle Grade idea won. Eventually I focused on it entirely and the YA idea went on the back burner.
Pay attention to your energy
When it comes to picking projects, there just aren’t right or wrong answers. There have been times in my writing career where I’ve powered through on one project, other times I stopped short to change gears.
Writing is just so hard, and if you’re not having fun writing it, chances are the reader is not going to have fun reading it. It’s important to drive projects to completion, but not to the point where you make yourself miserable.
But even more than that, it’s so important to remember that nothing is lost. Just because you set aside an idea or even a full rough draft, it will always be there for you to pick it up and dust it off when you’re ready for it.
The messy novel that I set aside in favor of writing Jacob Wonderbar later became the YA novel that went into the pandemic abyss. The YA short story I set aside in favor of my new Middle Grade novel is going back into a new horse race in the coming month. I like its odds.
May the most exciting project win!
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Art: Heaton Park Races, Manchester by Francis Calcraft Turner
Thank you! “Creative paralysis” describes my pandemic experience exactly. I appreciate your post both for making me feel less alone & providing good ideas for getting out of my own way.
So encouraging to know your struggle and how you prevailed, Nathan. Thanks!
I’ve mentioned in this space how the drive to finish my second memoir almost two years ago vanished overnight. I’d been working on it for two years and suddenly it seemed unimportant.
Perhaps that interlude mattered.
Whether it did or didn’t I haven’t a clue. What I do know is that I’ve slowly returned to finish it.. and actually believe it will be done by the end of the year!
Bully for you and for me… as well as for all others so stuck.
Thank you so much. I needed this this week!
During the Pandemic I wrote the first 90 dreadful pages of three novels. However, each of them of them began with agem of an idea, but my own creative paralysis faceted them too safely and they died of boredom. Two I months ago, I set them all in the 1980s and so none of them had internet I have begun weaving them together. Quite an interesting project it is pp