It’s been a busy week here on the blog, what with the start of interviews with Negative Space authors, but thankfully I had most of those prepped last week. This week, other than making sure those interviews went up OK, I had a little time to get new words down on the novel WIP. There were a few short-nap days, or days when naps corresponded with B-Bug’s various school Zoom meetings (which he uses my computer for), but on the days when I did get time, I really made the best of it. I added approximately (#) words this week, which isn’t too bad.
I am hitting that 20k mark on the project where I start losing momentum, so I’m debating taking a month or so off of it before I burn out all my ideas on it and use that time to focus on editing and prepping some new short stories for submission. Just to refresh the brain a bit.
I’m trying to be more aware of my creative energy needs, and the challenge of focusing on a single project month after month. Looking back on projects I feel have turned out well, I often have a break built into the middle of it, during which I work on other things and let my subconscious toil away in the background. That seems to work to replenish energy on a project and allow me to come back energized. I don’t swap between projects on a day-to-day basis very efficiently, but bigger chunks of shifted focus might be just what I need. We’ll just have to wait and see! But I do need to get some new work out, and I’ve built up quite a backlog of rough drafts, so it’s probably time to focus on them a little bit.
In the meantime-! Negative Space is coming out June 19th, and I’ll have several more interviews this next week and the week after. So keep an eye out for those, and here’s to a productive week for everybody!
Maggie Slater 