Life Intervenes

 

Terry here: 

Our question this week: When you are pulled away from the middle of a manuscript by life having more important priorities for you, how do you mark the place where you are in your head and how do you find your way back into it quickly? A second question do you work on more than one project at a time? And is that confusing? 

My computer is littered with manuscripts that I was pulled away from and never got back to. There’s Astrid—a book I completed but which has major issues. Life intervened, and I haven’t had a chance to get back to it. I sometimes spend time thinking about what needs to be done to bring it to completion. There’s another one, Dangerous Innocence, that I’ve worked on intermittently for a few years and which I still love. It only needs a little TLC to be ready to submit. I worked on it a bit this summer, but there were holidays, and a Craddock book coming out, and edits on the new Jessie Madison series, and a new Craddock to complete and turn in. So it got shoved aside. And there’s the Drummons book. Love the plot, but the characters needs reworking. And there’s the no-name one that I am still intrigued by that I had to put aside about a woman who works for a company that does educational videos. And Triple or Nothing, about a woman who loses her job, her apartment and her boyfriend all at the same time…and then her boss gets murdered. Etc., etc., etc. All wonderful projects that got shoved aside not necessarily by “life” but by other priorities. 

 The manuscripts that I prioritize are ones that I have contracts for. If they get interrupted, I have to get back to them. To find my way back into any of them I read what I’ve already written. That usually puts me right back where I need to be to continue. 

 I don’t often let it get to the point where I can’t remember what I was up to. We took a month-long trip to Africa a few years ago.

We were busy all day, every day. But I took an Ipad with me with a tiny keyboard and I wrote 500 words a day most days, snatching time whenever I could—riding on the bus to our next destination, working in the afternoon when others were napping (thank goodness I don’t need a nap). 

What I’m realizing by writing this blog post is that not much pulls me away from writing. When I had a full-time job in tech, where I sometimes worked eighty-hour weeks, I’d sneak out at lunch and sit in my car and write a few pages. When my son was a baby, I’d snatch time when he was asleep to put words to paper.  And I wrote my first Samel Craddock book on our catamaran, Black Pearl. 

 The only time I ever remember completely dropping my writing habits was when we lived in Florence, Italy for eighteen months. Just before we left I had gotten a note from my agent saying that he had been unable to place my manuscript. I was discouraged. It seemed like there was no point in continuing. So while we lived in Florence, I lived life. Thoroughly. With great enjoyment. Without consideration for writing. It might have been a break that I needed. Because I don’t remember feeling any regret about not writing. I only remember spending day after day immersing myself in the beauty that surrounded me. And when I got home, I started to write again. 

As for whether I work on more than one project at a time, I often dip into other writing when I’m focused on getting a book done. It gives me a little break and allows me to refresh my brain. I have no trouble keeping the projects separate. I think that’s because I write character more than plot. The characters that inhabit one book, would be lost in another one. A Samuel Craddock police procedural has no connection with a Jessie Madison thriller. The female private eye book in the background has no connection with either of the others. 

 Oh, yeah, and I just remembered the Mendocino books. Two of them. And Substitute for a Day, a fun cozy I'm about halfway done with. All ready to be tackled …when I have time.