Balancing finished stories with ongoing projects

[Fahadijutt]

Hi everyone,


I’m curious how other authors manage multiple projects at once. Do you usually finish one story before moving on, or do you keep several in progress?


I’ve found that alternating between finished stories and ongoing ones helps maintain momentum and keeps ideas fresh. In some of my funnel and project work (including a small project called Funnelsflex), keeping multiple threads moving in parallel tends to prevent creative block and workflow bottlenecks.


Would love to hear how others handle this balance in their writing routine.

 

[Eldoria]

do you keep several in progress?

This is difficult for me... prioritizing fiction is more feasible than working on multiple fictions in parallel. I have a hard time thinking about various fictional simulations by working on multiple fictions in parallel.

You see... each fiction has its own story logic, different characters, different worldbuilding, different plots and conflicts... and as authors, we have to keep all of those fictional elements in mind while writing a new chapter.

If I force myself, I might end up creating inconsistencies, plot holes, and breaking the immersion. After all, the thinking capacity of an author is limited - at least for me.

So, I will finish my fictions one by one in a priority list, instead of working parallel and simultaneously.

 

[L1aei]

Humblebrag much?

Look, with one novel, you keep momentum, you've got that squeaky clean mental space that prevents the "Uh... where was I at!?" lost and confused moment when getting back to your other works. But I will admit, if you hit that wall, you're stuck, so juggling can be a nice hobby that'll take a lot of disciplined practice to get a hang of it.

Like, okay, if you've been enjoying one for so long that you're suddenly dealing with erectile dysfunction, you can swap another onto your lap and keep proactive, but it is really easy to scatter your attention, especially when you've lost where you've been, and it is more than plausible to never fully commit to any happy endings.

Alright, enough of the innuendos.

If you wanna, maybe use separate docs to keep track, or do what I do which was a simple list with plenty of conspiracy theory-like threads connecting the dots (easy to get lost in that too). Otherwise, your inviting every fresh idea to eventually become lost drafts and half-baked plots.

 

[foxes]

You could make one story more interesting and complex instead of writing several.

 

[Arkus86]

You could make one story more interesting and complex instead of writing several.

And then there is an author I have in mind, who has half a dozen ongoing stories at any given time, and jumps between them seemingly at random. Pushes out multiple releases a week in a story for a few weeks or months, then abruptly stops and forgets about it for months or years while writing something else, either remembering another story or starting a new one. Or randomly drops a lone chapter every now and then.
Individually they can be complex and interesting, but I have seen... some major shifts in tone in those stories.

 

[L1aei]

And then there is an author I have in mind, who has half a dozen ongoing stories at any given time, and jumps between them seemingly at random. Pushes out multiple releases a week in a story for a few weeks or months, then abruptly stops and forgets about it for months or years while writing something else, either remembering another story or starting a new one. Or randomly drops a lone chapter every now and then.
Individually they can be complex and interesting, but I have seen... some major shifts in tone in those stories.

That sounds familiar. *Side-eyes a mirror*

 

[Arkus86]

That sounds familiar. *Side-eyes a mirror*

"This is getting out of hand. Now there are two of them!"

 

[Joyager2]

These days, to prevent burnout and to declutter my mind, I’ll write one story I'm especially invested in and do my best to make it something I’m proud of, and when the effort involved in that makes me struggle to stay motivated, I’ll spend a few days writing junk.