I Hate It When My Mind Takes Over

Dammit!

At the most recent meeting of the critique group I attend one of the members brought up the peril of spending so much time and energy on marketing the novel you have written, to the point where you are remiss in following up with writing the next one. This is a problem because the reality is the first novel is often your practice novel. It might take two or three novels before one gets published (Shit! I’m still on the first one).

I silently promised myself that I would limit the amount of time spent marketing Rules for Giving to agents and return to completing the outline for my next novel—The Orange and the Black.

Then yesterday it hit me. WHAM. Another idea for a short story. Now my dilemma is whether to return to the outline of the novel, or write the short story. I have written a few shorts in the last few months. It is a quandary because I am well aware that many agents peruse the literary publications for talented writers, so they are an important place to be.

My tactic as of late is to alternate weeks. One week I query an agent a day. The other week I work on writing. I’m getting to the point, though, that it is one thing or another. The multi-tasking think is not working.

See ya’ later.

WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com by Tim Sunderland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

 

Comments

[Pibarrington @dslextreme.com]

Wow, who are you -- me? I have the exact same problem!! I just haven't started querying agents yet. But yes, I know all about the uphill battle with marketing and promotion and that's what causes a majority of the problems in my humble opinion!!
Nice to know I'm not alone!