When Your Brain Holds You Hostage

I’ve been trying to be a good professional little writer and focus on getting the first draft of my Sidhe sequel done.  I have my outline, I like my concept and I’m excited to continue the story.

But a large portion of my brain is devoting itself to ideas and scenes for another novel I was working on, the tale of a feral burlesque dancer and a psychometric youth counselor.  Words are flowing out of my brain as if someone else is dictating them to me, sometimes literally faster than I can type them out.

And yet, when I turn my attention to my as-yet untitled rival, I hear the siren song of the Sidhe calling to me, reminding me of all the fun I had writing the first novel and how much fun remains to be had with the second (and eventually, third).

Add in an unusually busy schedule due to birthday season and preparing for Dave’s upcoming cancer treatment and the two halves of my creative brain have been battling royally for the much diminished laptop time.  Sadly, I am one of these people who truly doesn’t function well without sleep, so I can’t stay up late to try and get these stories out of my head.

On the one hand, it’s nice to have not one but two stories jostling for completion.  I think every writer fears eventually running out of ideas, so it’s good to know my brain is still fertile.  But on the other hand, I know I don’t write well when I’m too distracted.  Immersing myself in a single world helps me to keep that world consistent, which is important when you’re making up a big portion of it.

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to work with these competing urges but so far, it’s not clear what to try.  I was focusing on the Sidhe novel and just trying to get down detailed notes for the other, so that I’d have them to spark new interest when I had more time.  It hasn’t been completely successful.

I think I need to find a way to increase my writing time or output.  Get both these stories out as quickly as possible because more ideas are bubbling in my brain.