Bruce Lee, as seen in the film Fists of Fury
The late Bruce Lee came up with a martial arts style known as Jeet Kune Do. Unlike most styles, JKD doesn’t have a fixed set of techniques; rather, it emphasizes combat-effective moves above all. The practitioner keeps what is useful and iscards what is useless. In this way, it is the forerunner to what we now call “mixed martial arts,” or MMA.
This approach — keeping what works, discarding what doesn’t — isn’t only for martial arts, of course. It applies just as much to the profession of writing.
Larry Correia, the Mountain Who Writes, is a personal hero of mine. His advice to writers is to be prolific: write lots of stuff, then release that stuff, then write some more, release some more, and so on. I am often in awe of how much he writes and publishes, and I wish that I could reach even one-tenth of his yearly output. To him, “writer’s block” simply isn’t a thing — he presses on, no matter what.
Because he is so prolific, I know that he works on multiple projects simultaneously. Thus I attempted the same thing recently, trying other projects while I figured out exactly how the events of Shining Tomorrow Volume 2 would go. I figured that I could knock out a quickie novella in the meantime, but no matter what I did, I would always hit a block.
This has happened at least three or four times, so I decided to step back and take a look at what I was doing. When I thought about it, I realized something: Shining Tomorrow not being done disturbed me. I couldn’t devote excessive attention to any other project because it would take time away from my current series. On creative projects, I worked best when I could focus 100% of my attention on a single project; if I start a new project, I must completely disregard the old one.
My mind worked differently from Correia’s, so it was impossible to emulate Correia’s techniques. I had to use what worked for me (full focus) and discard what didn’t work for me (multiple projects at once.)
If I am to fulfill my goal of being prolific, I must focus on one series at a time and write it to the very end, then move on to the next one and keep it up. There’s more than one way to grow a backlist, and there’s no point in doing something ineffective.
Just like in Jeet Kune Do.
I share your feeling about the difficulty of doing multiple projects at once. I don’t necessarily stick with one series at a time, but I do prefer to stick with one book at a time. If I’m concentrating on one book, the writing mind stays in that book while I’m busy with other tasks, thinking about what happens next, and it’s that much easier to pick up the writing next morning.
I’ve found that to be true.
Rawle,
Thanks for the post. I too can’t multitask. My brain is wired to work on one task at a time. ,I noticed this when I built my models. I’d work on the main one and breaking it down to subassesmblies. When i finished then I would start with the secondary things, like the models placement, etc etc
xavier
Yeah — one should always learn how one’s mind works to get things done.
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There is only One Way to write, and that one way is different for every writer. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something (probably their Super Duper Fiction Writing Formula Guaranteed to Produce Bestsellers).
You’re likely correct. I sometimes wonder if the authors of those books make more money with books on writing than with actual fiction.