Monday, September 30, 2013

Grandiose Ideas

I have a habit of getting an idea in my head, thinking it's entirely possible to do, despite the following facts about my life:

1) I can be called in to work with a day's notice, and because I need to save money, I will agree to go in.
2) I can have anywhere between two and five days' work per week.
3) I have family obligations.
4) I promised myself I would maintain a semblance of a social life.
5) I plan to do too many things at once.

All five are true. It doesn't take much effort to remember them. And yet, recently I've had a few ideas that aren't practical in the slightest, for the above reasons. They include:

1) Writing and posting a 'horror' poem every day in October onto ParagraVerse.
2) Writing and publishing twelve related books in 2014 (two of which are already written, and they aren't the Modern Irish Myth books).
3) Writing (and releasing weekly) a multi-plot story (as in, multiple variations of events) that essentially triples with each addition of a story (meaning by week 4 I would need to release 27 variations of the same chapter).
4) Writing and editing an unplanned book in a month, at a length of 75,000 words.

How many of those things are actually possible? Technically, all of them, but not if I have work and/or family obligations more than three times per week. So, basically, I made the decision, repeatedly, to do the impossible. I actually began the 75K book, before realising how impractical it was to attempt it when I fell behind by 4000 words after three days.

But this keeps happening. I mean, in theory I could do these things. I could still do the 12-books-in-a-year thing, but it would require a lot of work, and a lot of planning (starting now) and they would all be novellas. It's still something I might do, but I need to see how well the two books I'm editing at the moment turn out in the end. If they're no good and require a lot more work after these edits, then I can't write another couple of books before January.

The problem with these big ideas is that I don't actually have many days off, lately. As it is, I won't have a full day to myself until Monday next week. Sure, I'll have half-days and evenings, but that's it. I'll get to go into town to buy my comic books, and I'll get to go out for dinner and go to the cinema, but I'm not going to get do these things whenever I want in any given day. And I certainly don't have a lazy-day ahead of me any time soon.

I'm not complaining, mind you. I like the way things are right now. I just have to keep reminding myself not to start getting my heart set on these massive long-term projects that require me to have more time available than I currently do.

Over the next week, I'll have my editing and planning hats on interchangeably, and by my next day off I'll know what sort of state I'll be in to do my massive 12-book-publication year. At the very least, I'll write some fun stories.

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