On my course, they often ask us to complete writing activities, advising us that we can use fresh, new ideas, or extracts from a work in progress (WIP). Throughout, I have decided which direction to take based on what the activity requires and how well it suits my work in progress. By this point, however, the question isn’t ‘Does my WIP fit this activity?’ but ‘Which WIP do I use?’. I saw a meme recently – the jealous girlfriend one, in which the current WIP is the girlfriend, the boy is the writer, and the other girl is a ‘new writing idea’. And this spoke to me so loudly!
When I started my course, I had two long form pieces I was working on. A post-apocalyptic novel about a girl travelling across a zombie ravaged Britain; and a sci-fi about a stowaway sneaking across a galaxy to find an ally on another planet to help him prove his uncle innocent of crimes he has been arrested for.
I now also have a novella length story that I disregarded for my final EMA, the EMA itself (15,000 is the target on that one!), and several ideas in my writer’s notebook which haven’t left the story sketch stage. The activities have often led to little snapshots of ideas that I file away for future development as well!
This is not to mention my collection of short stories, and then there are the ever-tempting competitions and epublications: as mentioned in an earlier blog post, I like to keep my work out there, even if it just boomerangs back to me!
All of this adds up to quite a lot of distraction (or is it careful time-management). Whether I am spending time deciding which WIP to use for an activity, or dallying over which WIP I want to work on at any point in time, this does not help with the busy work of actually writing!