Things to do in December

As usual, there is plenty to do in December, and not really enough energy on my part left to do it. Now that NaNoWriMo is over, and we have even had the TGIO party to prove it, I am left with two full length novels cluttering up my computer, and no idea which of them to work on first. However, I have a sort of plan! I’ve decided to try and interleave the editing process for the two novels in such a way that I can work on both at the same time, which may well turn out to be a recipe for disaster. Oddly enough, earlier in the weekend I wrote a blog post about multi-tasking for ‘Authors Electric (a group blog in which 30 or so authors each write a post on a certain date each month), and I think I reached the conclusion that it was a bad idea. So we’ll see.

I am at slightly different stages with the novels and they are in different genres, which may or may not help with the process. ‘Pitkirtly XV (Murder, or What You Will’) is still not quite long enough for my liking, so I will have to resign myself to writing a bit more as I go through the edit. This isn’t actually a hardship, since I really enjoyed writing it, probably more than I’ve enjoyed writing anything since ‘Death in a Cold Spring’, so I hope that’s a good omen!

The ‘other’ one, working title ‘Brighton Heirs 1’ is a bit further on as I’ve been forcing myself to read through it lately, and have got more than halfway through without wanting to delete it from my computer! I think the work it needs is a bit different from what I need to do to ‘Pitkirtly XV’ as there may be research involved. I don’t think I’ve described things enough for a historical novel, and I’ve also been changing people’s names, always a recipe for disaster.

And of course, there’s what is often my final task of the year (apart from the income tax form, which I’m trying not to think about) which is to write a plan for next year, even although this usually turns out to be not worth the paper it’s written on! I suppose this is what they mean by the triumph of hope over experience.