When do you start the next book?

[James]

I will try and get a summary of what I envision a new book to be as soon as I get the idea. I may start fleshing a new project out when I need a break from my current book. However, I start to get serious about working on a new project after I finish the first draft of the current project. I start outlining my new project and researching it. By the time I send out my current book to editors, I am ready to start the first draft on my new book.

[Scott]

I am fighting the urge to do the most stupid thing in the world which is to write two, entirely different genre novels at the same time.

I am planning to use my first three books as the end of "Part One" of my writer's apprenticeship. Having hit the 10,000 Kindle mark for these three, I am allowing myself to begin the long planned Hist Fiction series which I plan for roughly seventeen novels.

I am also scribbling notes in my wee black notebook for a modern novel. I know I should put that to the back of my mind, but every time I tell people the synopsis I get a lot of encouragement to pursue it.

So, I am fighting the urge to being two at the same time. Anyone ever had nay success flipping back and forth between two projects? Tell me it is a bad idea!

[Matthew]

I'm terrible for this. Emma Darwin (see how I name-drop there?) recently identified in me a trait I share with not a few histfic writers, which is research-as-displacement. I have a perfectly good WW2-set novel underway to the tune of 77,000 words at the moment, yet I have also spent weeks this year researching the North West Passage expeditions of the mid 19th century (for the sequel to Daedalus and the Deep - and then wrote 16,000 words of it), more on the life of 1930s racing driver Dick Seaman for a biographical novel tentatively named The Salute, and an almost pathalogical foray into the infantry square for an idea for a somewhat experimental piece that will probably come to nothing.

I admit I need help.

[Matthew]

...I probably shouldn't mention the five non-fiction books at various stages of completion

[Harold]

I started my second novel about four months ago and have written approximately 60 pages. Titled (tentatively) "Alsoomse and Wanchese," it will be mostly about the aspirations and conflicts of sister and brother Algonquians of Wingina's tribe at Roanoke prior to and during the presence of Englishmen ending in 1586.

[C.P.]

I read four to six books at the same time, ranging from super-serious to "brain on hold," but write? Sorry. I have to focus on one.

[Matthew]

C.P. wrote: "I read four to six books at the same time, ranging from super-serious to "brain on hold," but write? Sorry. I have to focus on one."

I only wish I could. I'm going to have to rationalise the number of projects I have underway, but I can't see myself ever having fewer than three books at one stage or another at any given time

[Scott]

I have a plan. I will actually WRITE my fourth HistFict novel, but use the Pinboard function on Skrivener to capture ideas for my modern novel, but I will force myself not to actually write any text.

Seems like a decent compromise.

[S.K.]

I don't think I could work on more than one novel at a time. However, my research habits are incredibly disorganized, and I think that's just part of the process for me. Especially at the beginning of a new project, I like to jump around and research anything and everything.

Scott, if you can happily work on multiple books at once, then do it! I don't think there are any rules unless you start to feel that you are losing focus.

[C.P.]

I should qualify my last statement. At the moment, I'm writing a five-part series, so I do have different books in the series going simultaneously, even though I devote my actual writing time to whichever one is current (3, at the moment). When I have ideas for 4 and 5, I jot them down in the notebook for that project. Scrivener—or Storyist, which I use—is enormously useful for that.

Also, once I have a near-final draft of one book, then I do start working on the next while waiting for comments. It helps, I find, to take four to six weeks away from a project before final revisions. The brain stops filling in all the stuff I took for granted, so I approach the book more as a reader would.

I know writers who thrive on keeping two or three very different books going at one time. That just doesn't happen to work for me.

[Christine]

The most interesting thing about this thread to me is the wide diversity of the creative process from person to person. I don't know why that tickles me so much, but it does.

[Carol]

Lots of ideas about books to write all the time. The hard thing though is to sit down and write one.

[Matthew]

Carol wrote: "Lots of ideas about books to write all the time. The hard thing though is to sit down and write one."

Amen! Speaking as one who is struggling through a slow patch in my current WIP, I wish my new ideas could wait until I'd finished. New ideas can be so attractive, but the hard part is definitely putting 80-100000 words of the current project down, one after another.

[Barbara]

When to start your next book is an interesting question. By getting into a new book before you've finished the final edits for the last book can impact the dialog for both. I was in the final stages of editing a historical fiction novel then started a YA SciFi but I could not get the HF dialog out of my head. There is that period while you're wrapping up a book and starting the marketing when you end up putting so much time into marketing that you get the writers itch. So I need to make sure I'm not blending the two during that period.

[Maggie]

When it comes to "writing" novels, the terms "start" and "finish" are relative. After I 'finish' the first draft of a current novel, I move into editing mode, during which I 'start' thinking about the next one, setting up the plot and imagining important scenes. Once I 'finish' the semi-final draft of a current novel, there's a gap of time while others are editing it, during which I 'start' writing the next one. This continues as I do several revisions until the first ms is truly 'finished' and ready to be printed. At that time I turn my complete writing attention to the next book, which will surely be interrupted by promoting the 'finished' novel.

I hope this made sense. Maggie Anton

[Christy]

I have distinct stages for each novel:
1. concept/research - I let these percolate for several weeks
2. synopsis (I use the Snowflake Method to build it) - a day
3. Scene list creation - a day or two
4. First draft - about 2-3 months, depending on life
5. Editing and more editing - a month or so
6. Beta - 2-3 months
7. Editing and more editing - a month

For my one series, Druid's Brooch, the first, Legacy of Hunger, was just published in October, and I had already finished the first draft for the next two (Legacy of Truth and Legacy of Luck). I like to put the project aside after the first draft and do something else before I go back and do my first read-through edits, as it clears my palate, so to speak. But it was helpful having all three 'on the table' at once, so to speak, so I could have threads that connected the series.

Right now, I've got one published, one waiting for edits from the editor, and the third newly submitted. I've another unrelated novel (Call of the Morrigu) with the first draft done. I'm about 3/4 through the first draft for a fifth (The Enchanted Swans). Once I'm done with that, I'll go back and edit Call of the Morrigu and send it out to beta readers. Then back to Enchanted Swans... and perhaps start a new one. I've already got ideas jotted down!

It's very helpful for my psyche to have these distinct stages. I have a bit of OCD about finishing projects, but I can psych myself into thinking a stage is 'finishing.' That way, I can work on something else while waiting, for instance, for beta readers to finish a stage.

[Catherine]

My computer is full of beginnings. I'm good at beginnings. the problem is, then I don't know where to go.
Sometimes I work on two books at once, but I've decided to stick with number four in my saga until it is finished, then start something new, then after a few months go back to number four and read it with a fresh eye. I haven't yet discovered the ideal way for me. Comes from being a Libran. (my excuse for everything)