Agony, or how to not write too much at once
Currently, I am knee-deep in one of the most engaging and important projects of my writing career. There’s no “maybe” about penning prose and game design for this particular piece - without a doubt, my words are in that book and on shelves by the summer. It brings with it a curious kind of focus, a knowledge that this is your task and you’d better get it done. And yet, I still can’t stop thinking about one thing.
Novel number one.
It’s been plaguing me for months now, and the reason for it is I’ve got ideas and motivation bursting at the seems for it, so much so that writing anything else at all outside my day job feels like so many minutes being wasted. This isn’t because I’m uninterested in the RPG book project - far from it, I’m more engaged than I’ve ever been with freelance work. But It’s that all-consuming urge that drives me towards thinking about and planning that I find hard to deal with.
One of the ways I let a little of the pressure out of this little pressure cooker I call my noggin is through emailing. I email character names, place ideas, and plot points to myself, all under the email title of “book” (so I can quickly find all the emails in my archives when the time comes). I find it’s a good way of ensuring I don’t go COMPLETELY NUTS when I’m trying to work on other stuff.
My final deadline for this RPG stuff is early to mid-February. It’s intense, and I know we’ll be doing some redrafting, but I’ve never been so excited about a single novel idea I’ve had. In addition to that, the iPad 3 should show its face in March, which means not only a Kindle release, but a complex, feature-rich iBook version as well.
Today, I had someone I didn’t know (no offense to you sir, of course) approach me on Twitter and ask if I had any published work kicking around. Oh, did I mentally shake my fist at the sky, and cry “why do you ask this of me now, sir?! Why not in six months, when novel #1 and the RPG book will be out?” It’s astonishing to have someone ask you what stuff you’ve got out, seriously. I’ve never had that before, and I was flattered beyond all belief.
So, if you’re in my position, write all of that stuff down, relax, let it go out of your head for a bit, and get on with your top priority work for the time being. Then, by the time you’re free enough to start, you’ll be eager and well-prepared, rather than dealing with a first draft you wrote at two in the morning in an effort to stop all the ideas beating your brain senseless every day. Enjoy your idea rush, people. Laters.
