Sometimes, it’s like a jinx to talk about what I’m writing, because I find more often than not that I will have moved onto another project by the time I come back for an update. I’m like a kid hopping around the backyard, chasing after different coloured beetles whenever they interest me. Since the last time I spoke about what I was writing, I’ve already started something else … why am I the way that I am.

I don’t consider it a terrible thing to be constantly shuffling the stories under my hands, because there’s a relief in the fact that I’m writing. Of course, it’s not great to have such an inconsistent attention span, but I usually follow what moves me at the time because I know I’ll have long and fun writing sessions. I’m far too inclined to switch to something I’m excited to write about over something substantial that I should just be trying to power through. Sometimes I look at it like this:

Time spent trying to write < Time spent writing

even if this means that I’m moving on from something that I was trying to commit to.

Nevertheless, though I may be an inconsistent project manager (I’m a thousand times better when I’m being paid for it or doing it for someone else), I have been writing a lot more. I’ve stopped counting how much I’m writing, trying to make more progress with how I feel about writing and how much of a story I’ve written rather than giving myself those target counts. That might be something I return to in 2021 though, considering I do think have those targets to hit can help me write those extra few words.

I was meant to be working on X and a few others that I started a few weeks ago but while I was looking through the projects where I have a finished first draft, I came across TAS and started looking through it before writing a side story based on an idea I had a long while back, and I’ve been enjoying that. It’s going to be a short story that takes place in the same universe but some time into the future. I’ve churned out quite a lot and am reaching the climax of it but don’t be surprised if next week I’m working on something else.

At the moment, I’m drawing up lists of work that needs to be looked at in the following year, hoping that the return to fairly “normal” life will help me get back to working through projects like I was in the beginning of 2020. The goal is to do a lot more editing/refining in 2021 so that I might actually be producing work of a standard that I can start sending off as submissions.