Monday, December 13, 2010

Just Do It

I told a friend of the new novella/novel idea expressed in the last blog, and he said, "Another one?"  Then I told my better half about the idea, and she said the exact same thing.  And so it's occurred to me that I've got too many things going on at the same time, and not too much time to write any of them.  Doubly frustrating!!!

Right now I'm working on:

1.  Novel idea expressed last time.
2.  The Gravediggers--one of the Novels in Progress that may form a trilogy with...
3.  Apocalypse--one of the Novels in Progress that takes place right at the end of a major world calamity and the end of WW3.  Most of it takes place in Kansas City, NYC, Rhode Island, and occasionally at a few other points throughout the world.  A couple of excerpts of this NIP are in blog entries below.  This is the NIP I'm probably furthest into, and will probably form a trilogy with The Gravediggers, and with...
4.  The novel about the plague(s) throughout history, one of which will happen in the timeline of Apocalypse and The Gravediggers, but that also took place in places like Eyam, England, a similar locale of which forms the backbone of this NIP.  See excerpts and research in blogs below.
5.  The Observer--a NIP that I really like, on which I've written many chapters, fragments, etc. over the years, but which I'm maybe still not ready to fully get into.  You can just feel that, you know?

So that's, what, 5 novels (or NIP)?  That's a lot.  But also there are...

6.  A long article on Pedro Martinez's peak brilliance, as compared to the peaks of others, in our time and before, using some stats (and common sense) that I have not found on baseball-reference.com, or in anything by Bill James, or in Baseball Digest, etc.  Maybe excerpts of #6 and #7 on my sports blog?
7.  A long series of articles on the Hall of Fame voting for MLB.  This series is unique because it focuses not on the fact that HOF players got into the Hall, but on the number of voters who felt that they didn't belong.  Large numbers of voters felt that Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, etc. did not belong in the Hall.  There has never been a 100% unanimous selection to the HOF.
8.  Research for short story and novel submissions--and the actual submissions themselves.
9.  Critiques for the pieces submitted by members of the three writers groups I belong to.
10.  My house, my better half, and the fact that I have an actual life, which also includes my career.

I need to set some sort of schedule.  I just finished my grad. class, thank God.  Now I have to pick one of the novels above, just go for it and finish a draft, while spending time with the submissions as well.

And the energy to do it all.  I heard that J.K. Rowling woke up at about 4 a.m. and wrote until 6 a.m. to get her kids to school, and then wrote until she had to pick them up, and then wrote after she put them to bed.  And then over and over again.  Good Lord, give me the strength!  How?!?  I guess...just do it.

3 comments:

  1. Wow. I would not want to be writing at 4am. I would not want to be doing anything other than sleeping at 4am. That's dedication.

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  2. If you never seem to finish anything maybe you should start with the ending. :)

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  3. Cinnamon, that's good advice. I've actually done that a few times--with Cursing (the prologue and 1st chapter are on my website if you'd like to take a look), The Gravediggers (which is maybe 60%-70% done), and the untitled one under discussion here. So this bodes very well!

    Thanks for the comment, and for the good advice.

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