Looking back on the past 5 days, I see that I’ve spent time with two projects. As it happened before, when I have a nonfiction project and a fiction project, I gravitate to the nonfiction. This type of nonfiction especially: math workbook. I have the lessons titled, the vocabulary words listed, a checklist of the pages/activities to include in each lesson, and though there is writing and some creativity involved, it’s quite different from my fiction.
I’ve mentioned before how good it feels to publish a title. Accomplishment, for sure. But it also clears the decks for the next project. I’m not sure why, but I don’t find nonfiction as difficult to get the first draft done as I do fiction. I’m not sure if it’s vulnerability or uncertainty when writing fiction since I never plot/plan, versus nonfiction where the layout, at least for the workbooks, is based on tabs and margins and font size. The options for the workbook are certainly more limited than that of the fiction story. Perhaps there is something to having creativity bloom when options are limited. Or maybe those boundaries ease the inner critic’s voice.
I’m not quite halfway done with Building Fluency: Math Vocabulary. That in itself can be overwhelming. I’m not looking forward to the tediousness of creating an answer key. I’m about 4K words in on The Lost Gift. I thought I would finally get a story where 90% of it is between the two main characters. But they’re in an isolated cabin in the middle of a snowstorm, and if they want to find out who blew up the plane and why, they’ll need some outside help.
Like turning on a faucet, first a trickle, then a little more, the words are coming. I’ve logged in with the writer’s group every day this week. I’m far from winning the writing challenge this this month, but it feels good, purposeful, to make progress on these projects. The more writing work I do, the more I uncover about myself and my process. Haha! I would have thought I knew everything I needed to know about my writing process after 16 years. Do you find you prefer certain projects over others? If so, how do you balance your efforts?
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