Alice asked Rachel E. Pollock:

How many books are you working on at any given time? (The only skill missing is juggling!)

Rachel E. Pollock Wow, thanks for the great question, Alice! It's hard for me to figure out how to count projects in process.

I have a novel out on submission currently, which I know will involve further revisions when it finds a home with an editor/publisher; but it's hard for me to think of it as something i'm working on, since i can't work on it at this stage of the game!

I have two other novels in progress at present, one for which i've finished the first draft and the other which i'm first-drafting. I am the sort of person who needs distance between the completion of the first draft and the revision/rewriting. (I'm also someone who sometimes comes back to a first draft and goes, "This is complete shit and cannot be rewritten into something i'm proud of." I have a couple of totally abandoned novels that fit that bill.)

I also have the long-term goal of expanding my masters thesis (creative nonfiction) into a full-length book some day, but there's a lot of time i need to spend in some far-flung archives in order to do that. So, while i consider it something i'm working on, that book's going to have to be a project that builds slowly while i also tend to the rest of my writing career.

And, i also like to continue to write short-form work (primarily essays and short stories), which I'd some day like to assemble into a collection or two; so maybe I should count those along with the thesis expansion as "eventual books," so to speak!

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