Writers often end up with fragments of several books. You’ve got your main books you’re writing, and the skeleton of two more, and often five half started books.
Here’s the bottom line – get them written.
Writing in three books at a time often gives you plot holes. you need to pick ONE book, and WRITE that. Do you have the skeleton of it? Get that first. Figure out your save the cat, as I’ve detailed elsewhere. Make your 21 point sheet, then your 60 point sheet. Do this for all your books first. This way, once you’re done with one book you can work on the next with no interruption.
Here’s the statistics. 90% of writers start a book and never finish it. 90% of those who finish it only finish one book.
If you go to an agent or a publisher with three or more finished novels, you’re pretty much signed to a contract if you’ve managed two write THREE good books. Why?
They know you’ve got discipline to write, and you won’t be falling behind on deadlines. Publishers want a relationship with an author who writes salable novels. If you’ve completed three good novels, they know you’re in it for the long haul. And they also know that they’ve now got two books in the slush pile – if you start to fall behind deadlines, they can put out the next one while you get caught up.
So, which book do you work on first? The most complete one is not always the best option. But if you’ve got 65,000 words in a book and 2,200 in another, at this point you’re about done with the one – finish that one!
Here’s the trick. If you get stuck, work on another area in your book until you’re unstuck in the first area.
[Tweet “Write every day.”]
I’ve literally worked on a movie script, plugging all around a problem area until that was the very last area left to write. Once i finished that scene, I only had two brief establishing scenes to write and the screenplay was done.
Pick the novel that most captures your imagination. This one will write the fastest (unless as I said earlier, you’re 75% of the way finished or more with another).
Get it written. Don’t worry if it’s any good. Any worry about good writing usually leads to purple prose, the tendency of writers to write fancy writing that proves you’re a writer. That’s good stuff, but alas – that kind of stuff tends to jar the reader out of the novel.
Write your novel.
