In the Twittyverse authors often talks about their current work in progress (WIP), but I find that a really difficult one to answer, as it really depends on the day of the week, or even hour of the day. When I came back to organise and re-evaluate my work last year it was clear I’ve always written the same way, with dozens of things on the go at once. It goes against all the advice you get to ‘just finish’, and the approach isn’t for everyone, probably causes thousands of half written novels to exist, but it works for me.
Obviously at the very end of a process, or for a dedicated reason I’ll concentrate on one item of writing but writing isn’t enough unless you have a army of people to promote for you. To get anyone to read (and buy of course) your novels, you need your name heard about in positive ways, which is either via all talk and freebies, reviews, or getting published/winning competitions and the like, so short stories and poetry.
There are thousands of markets (and tens of thousands of submissions to the of course) and navigating all that takes times, effort, plus of course, you have to craft and create the poetry and shorter fiction as well. The bane of a writer’s life is the time lag from conceiving your baby to the birth (we’re talking more elephant than human in book terms) and while publishers have a great deal to do and their own businesses, one awful outcome is that over half the time you won’t know whether your work has been rejected or not looked at yet, even if you follow submission guidelines. The magazine may be on hiatus, be not considering submissions but not having updated the website, might have folded, many reasons, but the 1-6 month ‘expected wait’ means you need a bank of material to send out on a rolling basis.
My point being I have so many strands at different stages, that I always have pretty much at least a dozen or two works in progress at any one time, with the advantage that at least one of these will suit my mood at any given time. So what am I actively working on presently? Writing a new novel, editing a third draft of a novel, writing/editing four or five new short stories, revisiting and editing a dozen poems and short stories and identifying potential markets/ sending out (six story publications, nine poetry platforms currently considering my work), chasing endless leads to identify bloggers and reviewers who might add my recently published novels to their overloaded schedules, writing my blog and influences, and a book I just read gave me a really goof idea for another novel. So not much.
Stay safe,
Kit