Something I learned yesterday

Recently, I've been thinking of all of these awesome story ideas and how I should work on X novel for Y submission guidelines, or I thought about Z idea, which would be great to break into. And then there is my '08 Nano novel, I.V., that I need to edit, which has been set on the back burner, and the sequel to that novel that has almost 58k words. It's felt like I'm ricocheting around on my projects instead of steadfast and focused.

Today I started reading an e-book called 70 Solutions to Common Writing Mistakes by Bob Mayer (who has worked with Jenny Crusie on a few books as well as writing his own). I got it recently for free after signing up for Writer's Digest's e-newsletter (in the green sidebar on the left). The second mistake he mentions is Not Finishing (the first being, Not Starting, if you were wondering). Now, I have totally finished the first draft of I.V., and I'm making my way--however slowly--through revising it.

But as I mentioned before, I've been bouncing around like a chicken with my head cut off with all of the new ideas and opportunities that have shown themselves. It's interesting because I've been getting in my way more than really having an external distraction like TV or anything like that since I haven't been able to make my mind up on what to work on.

There were a few key pieces of advice that he said. One was that, if you don't finish the project you're not going to get a contract for the work. And two was to not move onto another project unless you finish your current work-in-progress. Yes, I know it sounds so simple, but for me, those words were very timely. I feel like it gave me a shot in the arm to get back to work on I.V. and give it my main focus.