Meredith Mansfield, Author

My primary writing task right now is the revision to BLOOD WILL TELL. That’s been going very well–nine chapters in just the last four days. But I’m a believer in Kevin J. Anderson’s Tip #4 for Writing Productivity (among others), so I’m rarely working on just one thing.

Tip #4 is to have multiple projects in different phases. The different kinds of effort don’t conflict because you’re using different parts of your brain and being able to switch off when you hit a sticking point or just get tired of one thing keeps you working on your writing, not surfing the internet.

So, my main task is this revision, but at the same time, I’m:

1. Brainstorming and doing some research on the next story (THE BARD’S GIFT).
2. Getting ready to start the second draft of SEVEN STARS.
3. Working on selling the last completed story (MAGE STORM). Right now, that means reworking the query and synopsis for another round of submissions.
4. Making various revisions to three short stories.
5. Making decisions about what to do with an older story (DREAMER’S ROSE).
6. Preparing for the Agents Day event next month.
7. And doing a number of critiques. In fact, I expect the number of critiques to begin picking up dramatically next week when the first round of exchanges for the Hatrack River Writers Workshop WotF Critique Group starts up.

Sometimes these things dovetail in unexpected ways. For the Agents Day, I had to reduce my one-and-a-half page synopsis for MAGE STORM to a single page. That was in interestng exercise in itself and not one I probably would have forced myself to do otherwise. But, like writing elevator pitches, it forces you to concentrate on what’s really important and what’s a distraction 0r at best a subplot.

And the elevator pitch for MAGE STORM has made me concentrate more on what’s key in that story. I think I carried the last query pitch too far into the story, so that gives me ideas on what to change in the next round.

Gotta love synergy.