Multitasking Time & Stories

The other day I posted this tweet on Twitter:

Writing is hard work. But it's also exciting, fun, something I'm compelled to do, and yes... even cool. :)

I have a bunch of ideas cluttering my brain at any given time, but when I get stuck into a WIP I usually get so consumed by the story I'm working on that I hardly have time to devote to other projects.

This is EXACTLY what happened this month. I spent the last 4 weeks writing the first draft of my YA horror novel about a bunch of kids and the scary stories they tell each other. Every spare moment I had during the day was spent adding new words, or figuring out what was coming next.

But this time I decided to do things a little differently:

• Writing during the day
• Note-taking during the afternoon
• Researching other stories at night

It's amazing how much you can get done on your phone while sitting on the couch with hubby and watching Judge Judy on YouTube. LOL.

After a day full of words, the evenings are a good time to let my mind wander and lose myself in the possibility of other worlds and characters. So I collected heaps of inspirational pics, researched a bunch of concepts, named characters, made relevant graphics, and then sorted through all the files I created for easier (future) access.

Not only is this super productive, but I also had a lot of fun planning ahead. I now have about 6 ideas at different stages, and another I've just started to develop.

All of this has worked out very well, but there's one thing that suffered: reading. Working on stories fills my brain with so much I become obsessed with what's inside my head and don't have time for anyone else's stories. *cries*

Now that my current WIP is done, my new challenge will be to add reading time to the mix! I definitely want to keep developing these new ideas between projects and want to allocate more writing/revising time, but I need to include my reading habit back into the routine. I have TOO many books on my TBR pile not to.

Wish me luck!