Life, Writing, Weirdness

So I stuck to the 2026 writing plan, which I’d actually started keeping the structure of in the middle of December while still on the winter break of my MSc year, all the way until the 11^th of January. It was some time during that second weekend of the year that I decided I was trying to hit too many things per day, especially on weekdays. The idea was to make a little bit of progress on at least three things and then push that to at least four, plus some recording, plus a submission, on weekends.

I was managing, mostly, but that little bit of progress felt like not enough ground being gained on any of the things I was working on.

So I made an adjustment to the overall idea of what progress was going to mean, hitting on the idea that I’d like to tackle the big projects (mostly novel-length work) in a different way, cycling through different projects at different drafts, which would give me one thing to make big progress on every day I had the time to work and then add a second thing, which would normally be a shorter project, at a similar scale on weekends when more time was available due to lack of commuting and no time spent in class. In the meantime, I’d put a few minutes in on the Memory Project as desired and write blog posts as I felt I needed them. And I do like to have some temporal space in between successive drafts of a project so I’m able to come back with some fresher eyes for the next round.

To spell it out completely (or compactly, really), the large project cycle should eventually look like this:

1. Outline – Project 5
2. First Draft – Project 4
3. 2^nd Draft – Project 3
4. 3^rd Draft – Project 2
5. Final Draft – Project 1
6. Outline – Project 6
7. First Draft – Project 5
8. 2nd Draft – Project 4

And so on, so that each project gradually marches down the stairs. At the project level, a set is considered a single project, so the time spent on any given step is pretty variable.

Of course, that assumes I currently have a project that needs to go into each of those stages, which I don’t. The easy solution there is to skip steps where there’s nothing to fit until there is. To get there will look something like this with the actual projects I’m going to slot in:

1. First Draft – The Hauntings of Fiona
2. Final Draft – Troll World Quintet
3. First Draft – Heroic Genesis
4. 2^nd Draft – The Hauntings of Fiona
5. Final Draft – Welkiri Corps
6. First Draft – Extragalactic Contact
7. 2^nd Draft – Heroic Genesis
8. 3^rd Draft – The Hauntings of Fiona
9. First Draft – Fermi’s Loss
10. 2^nd Draft – Extragalactic Contact
11. 3^rd Draft – Heroic Genesis
12. Final Draft – The Hauntings of Fiona

And it’s a while yet before I need to outline something else, although I’ll keep poking at the Valkyr Station outline in the background as moments present themselves.

Based on normal working times and the idea that I can generally maintain the pace without taking too many days off, getting to that point in the rotation will take me until the middle of next year. But we’ll see what life has in store.

The average single novel will also need, based on those same assumptions, 15-18 months to go from outline started to finishing the final draft.

Those are all working titles, by the way. The Hauntings of Fiona is a Fantasy novel that’s almost more a set of standalone stories that stitch together into an overall narrative, and I finished the first draft on January 21^st. I’m crushing the Troll World final drafts, having just started on book 4 yesterday, and would generally class these as YA Portal Fantasy. Heroic Genesis is a Superhero novel with the first draft already containing about 26.5 thousand words, but I’m letting it rest in the back of my mind until it gets to the top of the list. Extragalactic Contact is a Science Fiction story set some large amount of time after the remnants of the first interstellar species decide to share some of what they know with every intelligent species they’ve discovered, which did not go well for the galaxy as a whole. Fermi’s Loss is something I’m tentatively pursuing as a SF story collection but might actually do better as a Role-Playing Game setting. The next project in line can easily get moved up if I need to since I have nine novels plotted to the scene level. And I may have mentioned before that there are quite a few other next projects at various points in the planning stages, so I’ve got enough to keep me busy for a while.

But the focus has already been working well for me. One I made the switch, the last few thousand words of The Hauntings of Fiona came fairly quickly and I’ve already noted the progress in Troll World. I’m not saying the plan won’t alter again at some point, but it feels like it’s working right now and that will do fine.

Be well, everyone.