The benefits of having multiple writing projects

I’ve always been a monogamous kinda girl. I only ever liked one boy at a time. I never flip flopped between Salvatore brothers (team Stefan, don’t hate me). I’m faithful to my favorite color and my favorite foods have been the same for decades. I even take it so far as to be a monogamous writer, working on only one story at a time. Always. Don’t get me wrong, I have at least 30 (maybe more) story ideas in my notes and on half started pages, but I only ever work on one story at a time. Until now.

(all the titles in the images are incorrect, since two of my projects still don’t have titles)

My Main Project, Legends of Avalon

Currently, I’m working on THREE writing projects at one time (not including the planner I’m in the process of making 😅), and instead of more stressed, I feel more fueled. Which is not what I was expecting.

When publishing my first two books, it made sense to be tunnel visioned and perfectly focused, but now, during the beginning of writing my third book, the burnout is stronger. So this time, when I begin to feel drained on one project, I work on another for an hour, and my juices start flowing again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still exhausted, but the exhaustion is spread out, so it feels less intense. 

Secret Project Number One

I’ve always thought that part of the reason some people never seem to get around to self publishing is because they can never stick to a story and finish it (which is sometimes true), but I think the real secret is finding a balance. 

Currently, I have three projects going:

1) Legends of Avalon (final book)

2) To Train a Huntress 

3) A Fool’s Bargain

But I think I’ve figured out a way to balance them all—actually getting them done while using the creative energy from having three projects to fuel my fire—having a plan. 

Secret Project Number Two

After the first step of simple brainstorming for my two secret projects, I estimated how long my two projects would be based on the length of previous books and what I think these new stories word counts would be, then I used my average word count per scene, and divided the estimated total word count by it. Now I know that sounds like a lot, so let me explain.

For example, if my first book (Legends of Avalon: Merlin) was 210,000 words, I can estimate that since my secret project is a simpler story, it should only take 130,000 words in total. Then, dividing my first book’s word count by the number of scenes that book had, I can estimate my average word count per scene.

So, (total word count of previous book)/(number of scenes in previous book)=average words per scene.

Which looks like, 210,000/52=4,038. So, since my average word count per scene is about 4k, I can then divide my estimated total word count for the new book, by that number.

130,000/4,000=32. Which means my new book will have about 32 scenes. This tells me how long the outlining process will likely take and how long the actual writing process and revision process will likely take, and then I can make a list of all the pieces of the writing and publishing process for each book, and the estimated dates I think I can complete them by. Which looks like this 👇

Now, I want to clarify that these are all ESTIMATES. I have no idea if theses schedules will actually work, but based on my rough calculations, I can loosely predict how long each book will take to complete and publish, and then decide what dates of release make the most sense, etc. 

It sounds like a lot, but I swear it’s helped me a ton. Because I do believe that working on multiple projects at one time CAN be a hinderance if you don’t take those projects seriously. This doesn’t mean that you have to plan like I do—only crazy people do that—but it does mean that having some sort of plan or schedule to keep your multiple projects organized will make a huge didference. It’s like the difference between working on an essay that has no due date, versus an essay do on Friday. You’ll take one much more seriously than the other.

Bottom line, this is what’s working for me so far, so I thought I would share. If this method doesn’t work for you, that’s fine! We’re all different and function differently, but I think every method is at least worth trying. 

Do you work on multiple projects at a time? Does it fuel you or stress you? I’m curious how you keep it organized?