When To Cheat On Your Writing

Have you ever read more than one book at a time? You start one from your to-read shelf, then find another lying around you had promised the next read, and then when you pass a book store an unexpected fantastic book just pops out at you and you have to buy it and read it immediately. Before you know it, you're reading five books at one time.

And you feel like a cheat don't you?

I always do. It's like I've committed myself to the first book, then the second, now the third and after a while I feel like I'm having affairs on all of them. I'm a dirty reader.

I never used to have this problem when I was younger and had hours of reading time on my hands. But now that jobs, cooking, cleaning, snow removal, and writing have taken up so much of my time, it feels like I never read fast enough. Perhaps that's why I crave to start new books all the time. My body and mind are used to the newness every few weeks, and even though I can't keep up, I start new ones anyway.

I'm trying to break this habit, but there are so many good books out there that need to be read. So many authors I would adore and stories I need to fantasize about.

And now this bad habit of reading too many books at once has leaked into my writing. I've got a YA manuscript that needs massive revision, a memoir I'm rewriting, a short story in progress, a YA series that's unfinished and sitting in a cluster of outlines on my desktop, and I feel the need to add in a new MG book to write. All these open projects have made writing daunting. Where do I start? Which novel gets my attention today? Do I want to write or revise? Both? Neither?

Much like the reading of too many novels in tandem, writing a wide variety at the same time can be troublesome. But I've also found that it can help, too. For instance, if I know I need to write but the words just aren't coming, I pop over to a revision project and work on that for an hour or so until I'm in a writing frame of mind. On the flip side, if I'm frustrated with how many keys my fingers have pounded today, I can always sweep through an already written chapter and improve it.

Just like reading, writing in tandem can be just as beneficial as you feel it is detrimental. So don't feel like you're cheating on those other books or your other stories. In a roundabout way, they're all getting help. As long as you promise to write every day, eventually everything will get finished.

Will they all have the same dedication each day? No.
  
Will they all be completed on a set deadline? Probably not.

Will you be a writer? Definitely.

Will you one day finish them all (and then some more)? Heck yeah.