by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Just in the last few days, the novel project I’ve been working on for years now took a hard left turn. For some time now, I’ve been struggling with how to give myself the occasional opportunity to switch gears whenever I feel the novels I’m currently developing and writing have begun to wear me down some.
I’ve figured out how to do it, and it’s greatly expanded the task before me, but in a great way. I’ve decided to develop and write four novels all at once. This allows me to switch gears like I want, but to also stay in-universe. As such, I don’t have to re invent the wheel when it comes to basic universe building things like names and locations.
One key thing is all this new work is flowing really easily, so I don’t have to struggle with that kind of stuff.
All this gets me thinking about Stieg Larsson and how he wrote a trilogy, sold it and then dropped dead days after doing so. This is almost taking on the air of a Twilight Zone episode — I’m well on my way to writing FOUR novels, potentially selling them…then dropping dead soon after I do so. But, “they shoot writers, don’t they” as they old saying goes, so I guess I need stop complaining and accept that the life of a writer is often tragic and unexpectedly cut short.
And, yet, no fate but what we make. So, it’s at least possible that if I should miraculously sell four novels that I will live to fight another day. An issue writing four novels at once brings up is now I have to defuse my creative energies over four novels and think about how important the first book is. The first book is supposed to set the tone of any series and I’ve come up with a great concept.
It’s pretty much totally different than what I expected to write when I started all of this about three years ago, but that’s good because if I ever get restless working on one of the four books, I can always switch gears and start development and writing on another one — all while staying in-universe.
I figure that while this new approach may slow me down some simply because I have two more books to work on, it will actually make it more likely that I finish the entire project because even when I “take a break” from one book, I will still be within the universe I’ve come up with.
That, at least, is the plan.
