dira | Processfest! Days 3 & 4

processfest Day 3:

Do you work on multiple projects at once? If you do, how do you juggle them? Do they fight for your attention? Or are you singularly focused? Do you set aside specific time for one project or many projects, or do you let yourself be guided by what you want to work on the most?

Ahahahaaha oh God. Yes. Yes, multiple projects.

I keep lists.

I have a sort of aspirational list in a text file (called, misleadingly, 'WIPs') of things I want to write next. This includes ten different original novel ideas, the remaining nine stories I mean to write in the Aral/Jole series, seven different Teen Wolf things I want to write next, and a couple ideas apiece for Generation Kill and Welcome to Night Vale. What it does not include is anything I have actually started writing. Once I start writing something it moves to a desktop note, where I track everything that is in progress by working title, current scene, and current total word count, plus noting deadlines for anything that has one. My fandomaid stories, which I have not actually started writing, are also on the desktop note, just to keep me aware of them.

My attention is definitely divided among any or all of these, or yet worse new ideas that I have not (yet) dignified with recording anywhere.

I keep yet a third list, this one in my email inbox, named "writing priorities" and this one is numbered in order of priority. At the top, currently, is a story I'm trying to finish for hc_bingo before the round closes (odds of success: very dubious), and then the next Aral/Jole story, which has been sitting there at 485 words in ever since I started writing exchange stories in November, and then my fandomaid stories, and then some other things. This at least nudges me toward focusing on the thing that is the highest priority. In practice, while I have pegged my hookerfic second-from-last on the list because it has no deadline and can't be jossed, the truth is that I turn to it a lot when frustrated with other projects.

Lately the priority list is coming into play regularly because I've been using the magic of to-do lists and phone timers to force myself to do things that need doing, and I only put the first one or two stories off the priority list on the to-do list. Which is how I got my Yuletide story done on time, and managed to also write a Yuletide treat, and have been making steady progress on my hc_bingo story, even if it's probably going to keep being ten thousand words away from being finished for the next ten thousand words, as my stories are wont to do.

Day 4:

What do you consider a challenge for you? What is something that's hard for you? What part of your process trips you up? What do you wrestle with? What's always in your notes from your beta? What's the part of your process that makes you throw your hands up and go "This? Again? ARGH!"

1. I offset "too" and "now" with commas in a totally unnecessary way.
2. I have this penchant for writing things as reveals that don't need to be reveals, and I will contort the story to conceal some random piece of information so that it can be DRAMATICALLY REVEALED later in a way that does not actually serve the story at all, and then Iulia sighs and says, "This doesn't make sense, you need to just set this up linearly, that doesn't need to be a reveal," and I tell her she doesn't understand my ART, and then 24 hours later I say, "Um, I think I fixed it."
3. Writing basically anything that is not an emotionally charged conversation is usually cause for me whining and dragging my feet and complaining about what a stupid hobby writing is and why do I have to write ACTION SEQUENCES again or PORN, WHO CARES ABOUT PORN or WHY DO I HAVE TO DESCRIBE WHAT ANYTHING OR ANYONE LOOKS LIKE. But I'm getting pretty good at sucking it up and getting it done.

Processfest! Days 3 & 4

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