wrong project, but oh well

[swan_tower]

Man, I don't know what it is. All I have to do is decide, "I'm working on Thing X!," and I will without fail come up with ideas for Thing Y instead.

In the current instance, that means I decided I would try to finish "The Unquiet Grave" by the end of the month, and promptly put down 1,022 words on "Mad Maudlin" instead. Not really complaining -- I don't care which short story I make progress on, so long as it's one of them -- but I really wish I could find a way to leverage this for novels. As I said on matociquala's LJ the other day, it seems to me like there should be a way to do it. Contract for Book A, write Book B instead; then contract for Book C, somehow convince yourself you're working on that one for realz, whereupon you write Book A. Or something. But I fear deadlines might make that tough to wrangle.

Time to go think about "The Unquiet Grave" some more, in the hopes of finishing "Mad Maudlin" in the near future.

Comments

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I read a how-to-be-incredibly-productive-by-procrastinating thing some time ago that described more or less what you mean. It's how I used to study for finals. For longer projects, it seems to be a matter of having 'firm' deadlines, rather than firm deadlines, and keeping something scary on the back burner to spur you to comparatively benign projects. Like dwarf bread, only with stories.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

This happens with me, too. All I need is a hard deadline, and every other project wants to queue jump.

[lady-puck9999.livejournal.com]

Totally off-topic, but are you coming to ICFA again this year?

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yep!

[lady-puck9999.livejournal.com]

Yay!