Get messy with it, writers

Do you work on multiple projects at once?

Leadership research says to focus. Efficiency experts suggest we narrow in on what we want to accomplish and dedicate to a primary task with clarity and intention. Meanwhile, I feel like this Adobe Stock image above. Balancing, juggling, making no sense. Happy.

I have three different projects in three phases that are demanding my creative energy. On top of all of that, there’s life. Work. Family. Stress.

But back to the writing. Here’s where I’m at:

• CREATION STAGE: I’m in love with a new project I’ve started about the 90s performance arts scene. I also have a hundred new possibilities that bloom when I make any single decision about how to move forward on any scene. I’ve outlined it 4 times, and I now have 4 different possible plot directions and characters who are revealing themselves as more complex and nuanced by the day.

• REVISION STAGE: I’m elbow-deep in revisions of the Victoria Woodhull novel. I still get little flashes of insight about that book when I’m doing other things, little nagging mind notes that make me return to my sentences, delete redundancies, and drive my publisher crazy.

• MENTAL PREP: I’m waist-deep in the emotional sea that is putting a memoir-in-essays out there in a little over a year (mental/emotional boot camp time). This means returning to the work and ensuring it’s where it needs to be as a collection, as a whole and to begin thinking about the strange landscape of readings and events.

The messiness of being a human creator is the beauty of it all. As writers, we need to tell the full story, not the idealized and distilled version that suggests it’s all about discipline and perfection or finishing one project cleanly before the next while we meet deadlines on our fancy Gantt charts and use Excel to track our word counts, outreach, and bowel movements.

Some of us are messy.

We work on multiple projects at once, despite well-reasoned and science-backed advice telling us that we need to focus. While this research is solid, there is other research that says we need associations to learn and grow. We need to push the boundaries and commit to constant growth. And perhaps we can narrow while at a task, then narrow while at another.

From a macro view, my writing life has been dizzying, but it’s also been delightful.

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I am not saying I advise my three-projects-at-a-time process for everyone. I don’t advise anything. I often feel a little scattered, and my ideas can be difficult to manage.

But if you ARE operating in what seems a messy way already, I want to offer you this: there’s nothing wrong, and it can also be REALLY fun. More, it might mean your work is aiming at something larger, the body of work, if you will.

We can integrate when we work on multiple things with a singular intention. We can keep the brain AWAKE. The stimulation of transition and navigating the endless space of possibility between projects means we are never fully stalled—there’s always something to do with whatever energy we are bringing to the day.

I thought I’d share a few ways I’m staying sane (arguably) and embracing the mess. Think of these as things I’m doing, not so much tips. You can take what you need … more at THE RESILIENT CREATIVE