Et tu, Muse?

Hello friends. Have you ever gotten near to the end of a project, and all of a sudden every other project is super interesting? Or, in the case of my current brain, all of a sudden, there are new ideas everywhere. I’ve written more new things into my idea file in the last week than probably the last six months combined. Why do we do this? (Or maybe it’s just me?) While I’m close to the end of my revision (we’re firmly in Act 3 now) I still probably have at least a month more, maybe two. And that’s only going to get longer if I get distracted by every shiny thing my brain finds for me. And, holy cow, my brain is actively searching for shiny things. They’re everywhere. And you know that if I gave in and actually switched to one of these new projects, my brain would also give up on that one, or try to redirect me to something else, or decide now is an excellent time for a fanfiction hyperfixation. (oh no, I’m giving myself ideas.) Is this normal? I know other writing friends have this happen, but arguably no writer is normal, so this is a terrible litmus. If you too get distracted in the home stretch or find that you’re actively sabotaging yourself, what do you do to counteract it? My current technique is to tell myself that as soon as I finish my revision I’ll dedicate a month to chaos, where we…

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Taking Time to Try New Things

Howdy, friends! Did you see my new story on Saturday? (It’s here, if you missed it.) I wrote it completely for fun. One of the writing communities I belong to has this neat challenge every month called a genre stretch. The idea is to try writing outside your comfort zone, to try new things and to stretch your writing muscles, in theory making you a better writer overall. “Deserts and Domes” was my story for the February genre stretch. Each month, two genres are offered, and you can write in either one. Or you can combine both, which is what this story is. Genre 1: Gilded Age romance. Genre 2: Dystopia. You see the appeal. It’s like a writing prompt, but you can write basically anything as long as you incorporate the basics of both (or either) genre. I prefer to do the combo, versus just one, because it provides more restrictions and also gives a basic form to the plot. I also did April’s, which was: Genre 1–Campus Novel; Genre 2–Slipstream. So far I’ve been pretty pleased with the results. As a writer, you have stories you like and ones that you’re more lukewarm about, even when they’re decent stories, and I’ve liked both I’ve done this year. I don’t know, but there’s something about working in broad, new genres that is very stimulating to creativity. That’s what they say, right? Keep learning, keep trying new things, and you’ll only get better, and you won’t go stale. And it’s…

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