The short story is done, and I am back working with the urban fantasy, pulp novella starring Michael Lodestone! Woo hoo! Here are a few things I’ve discovered about switching away from a story for a week to write another:

It’s a bit of a shock to switch from the end of one to the middle of a half-done other. Yeah… I have to get back in the “mood.” I also have to get my mind out of the Victorian times and back in modern day New Orleans.

Never–I repeat NEVER–just switch to another project for a week without typing what happens next in the project you are working on. Here are the last two sentences I wrote in this Lodestone story:

Michael stopped. Something about Claire’s eyes, slightly panicked and uncomfortable made him realize

Realize what??? I can’t remember. I spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out why Claire was panicked… I think I’ve got it. I hope I wrote it down on some random pieces of paper scattered around my house…

Take an inventory of what you have left to write, how much time that will take, and how much time you have until your deadline. My deadline is April 15. While that seems a long way off, I know what I have left. The second draft of this will take forever and I’m not done with the first draft. Not getting four weekends definitively didn’t help, so March might be easier. Still, I’ve got two months, and I really need to get something done in time for beta readers. (Anyone wanna beta read this?) I’m going to have to buckle down on this. I probably out to set a goal of 3 hours a night on weekdays and at least 8 a day on weekends…

How about you? Have you ever had to stop a project to work on a short one? How did you do?

Toodles!