Day 973 - Trying two projects a day again

Yesterday, I was listening to some podcasts and thinking about my writing system.

I know that many prolific authors write in multiple projects at the same time. Sometimes they work on another project while waiting for edits on the book they just finished, or else they work on two books at the same time, working a few minutes on each of them every day.

So I was thinking would it be better for my career to release books in both pen names more slowly but at the same time, or to release books quickly in one pen name and then nothing while I write in the other?

I honestly think it would be better to release books in both pen names rather than having a long stretch of no releases in one pen name while I’m working on the other. But I don’t know if I could work on two projects at the same time.

Do I really want to do two projects in a day? Is that the most efficient use of my time?

Or, on the other hand, would it be better to work on two projects so that I can give my brain a rest from the Regency?

At the moment, I’ve been finding it easiest to do a scene a day—it seems to be a nice daily goal to work toward, to finish the scene I’m working on. However, my scenes have typically been about 3000 words, so that’s only about 3 hours of work (dictation and cleanup editing). I want to slowly increase my daily writing hours, but for some reason I’m reluctant to start dictating a new scene, because it feels like a huge mental hurdle, even if I tell myself I’ll stop in the middle.

However, it might not be as difficult to work another hour or two on a completely different project. It would be like giving my brain a rest from the Regency.

Also, if I can still do a 3 hours of work on the Regency every day, it won’t take me any longer to write each Regency book than I’ve been doing now.

So, inspired by the podcast, I considered maybe going back to trying to do two projects at once each day. I know I tried this before and it was hard to switch mindset every day, but one reason why I want to try it again is because it’s been difficult to get my head back into the Hawaii book when I work on it only one day a week. It takes a while to remember what I was working on the previous week.

Another reason why I want to try two projects again is because I’m doing the dictation now, and it might be easier to switch projects because of that. It seems a lot easier to simply pick up my digital voice recorder and dictate for a few minutes than to sit and type for a few minutes. Maybe it’s the mind shift from typing to speaking, but it’s been a lot easier to do brainstorming and a blocking with dictation than it was doing a typed freewrite.

So I thought I’d try writing in my Hawaii book only 15-30 minutes each day. I can either edit old writing (via typing) or I can do blocking and writing of new prose (via dictation).

I’m still not sure how I’ll do at switching from one story to the other, but if I separate the two with a break in between, it might be okay. Who knows? If it actually works, maybe I can work on both my Regency and contemporary series at the same time.

***

I thought I was starting off really well today. I got up early, I did my exercise. But then I got distracted by some things to do in my garden.

I need to stop getting distracted by those things! I think I just lose track of time. Maybe I should be setting alarms on my watch and phone to remind me of things I need to do at certain times so that I don’t get distracted by those types of things.

I managed to dictate one scene, but then my IBS flared up, so I took some medicine. While I was waiting for it to kick in, I did some marketing—if I don’t feel well enough to write, I might as well get other things done.

After doing some marketing, I decided to do some work on my Hawaii book, as I had hoped to do today. I hadn’t done as much work on my Regency yet (only about 45 minutes of dictation, and I wanted to do at least 90 minutes), but I only had to do some editing to a scene in the Hawaii book, which is something that I can do even when I have IBS pain.

I did almost an hour of work on the Hawaii book, which is great! I didn’t have problems switching my brain from Regency to Hawaii, maybe because I had that break where I did marketing in between, so it was easier to shift gears.

I took another break, and then did one more dictation session on the Regency, which lasted about 75 minutes to finish the scene. I’m really proud of myself!

My dictation speed was about 2300 words per hour for the first session, but it jumped to 2800 words per hour for the second session. I dictated for a total of about 2 hours and 5100 words!

The cleanup editing took less time than normal. I’m not certain if I’m happy or worried about that. Did it take less time because I was tired by then and I was trying to hurry through it?

Total, I worked for 4.5 hours today, which is much better than the 3 hours I’ve been averaging lately. I think that spending an extra hour (almost) on the Hawaii book helped to extend that time. I was able to do the editing on that book because it was a task that I could do even though my IBS was acting up a bit.

Writing streak: 452 days

Dictation streak: 28 days

My takeaway for today: Set alarms on my watch to remind me of things to do so I don’t get distracted.

My second takeaway for today: Try working on 2 projects every day again to see if you can do it and still be efficient. If it works, you can release books in both pen names at the same time, although more slowly for each.