Monday 18 April 2011

Narrowing Focus

One thing more frustrating than setting goals is changing goals. Unfortunately, I am finding I need to do a lot of changing. 

WIP 2 counter on the left has remained pretty static. Actually word count is quite a bit more than what it shows here, but all that is hand-written, so I don't know how much exactly. But I have decided for now, to put it on hold, and just focus on editing WIP 1. 

There are two reasons for this. One because I am much busier now at my day job. Hardly a minute to sit still, so I am far more preoccupied it even when I am home. It also makes me more tired. So it does have an impact on writing. But also, more importantly, I really want to give this one-book-at-a-time thing a go, and see if it improves my focus and makes the end result better. Because my theory is, focusing on one book would mean I would be stewing over just that one story, one cast of characters, instead of spreading focus over several.

Of course there are no guarantees that I won't start writing again soon. I guess I'm just in a frustrated circle of figuring out what works for me. But for now, at least for a next month or two, this is the plan. 

With editing, I can see improvements, though progress is slow. Because I am focusing on every sentence, every paragraph, changing and chopping things. But I can see it getting better, so it makes the effort worth it.

How about you? How are your projects coming along?

2 comments:

  1. My projects were inching along, but then I started taking part in the A - Z blogging challenge and everything else has pretty much ground to a halt. I have no one to blame but myself, the posts I'm doing are more time consuming than I expected but I choose to do them anyway.

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  2. Carol,

    I think half the problem is perhaps expecting too much. I mean, why should you blame yourself if you are doing something that you enjoy and find useful? Or why should I insist that I must have time to work on two books when I have a full time job? Perhaps we expect to do so much, we beat ourselves up for all the stuff we can't fit in, as oppose to being happy about progress we make.

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