Scribbling in the Silence

The past few days have been taken up by outlining the idea for a new book that just wont leave me alone. I have found in the past that if I outline it, I purge it out of my brain enough so that I can get back to my current WIP. I used to jump around like a skittish rabbit - every time I got a new idea, I would start a new WIP. So right now I have the half-written remains of about a dozen novels on my hard drive. (Hence my qualifying the current WIP as "current" - I have a dozen works in progress, technically speaking.) Ever since I started the outline-purging routine, I have about twenty more novels outlined. I, however, have made much better progress on my current WIP than I would have otherwise. I learned long ago that if I don't purge the idea from my brain, my brain tries to stick it into the current WIP and that does not work at all. Take the current example - I am writing a fantasy right now but the new idea was sci fi. I suppose it works for some people, but putting this particular sci fi idea into this particular fantasy novel would Not Work in such a way that it would end up more a humorous urban fantasy set in the future if that makes any sense.

So, now suitably purged, I am back to work on the WIP. Don't ask my word count, though. Some days it feels like I am two steps forward, one step back. Recent reports to the contrary, the assimilation of another POV is not going so well after all. I am seriously thinking about scrapping what I've done since then and going back to the backup I saved a month or so ago and picking up where I left off on that version. We'll see. I'll give it another week, I think.