At the moment I am working on my current WIP which has a working title of Avoiding The Game, which as I have mentioned before does not fit the story so that will change. As well as Avoiding The Game I’ve got Project Apollo beginning to catch my attention again. I’m coming up with a few little bits and pieces that will hopefully make the story roll a little smoother and help with character development. And Project Phoenix is flicking little bits of paper at me from the corner of the room, I think it wants attention.

So it got me thinking, how do I prioritise these different stories that are in me?

Okay that’s kind of easy. Avoiding The Game is number one, no question. This is the nearest to being complete and probably the one that I am most able to complete and turn into a story that makes sense. I is also the most simple of the three. In that I mean it is a fairly straight forward story without too many sub-plots that I focus on. It is also only told from one point of view which makes it easier in my opinion.

The next one is probably Project Apollo as this one is about a third of the way complete, although it does have its faults and it needs a lot of fixes. Me and Owen will be working on how to do that.

Finally, Project Phoenix. This is one which is kind of demanding attention. Project Phoenix was the mine and Owen’s first jump into writing. We were going to have it written, published and made into a movie within a year. Yes we were naive, very naive. the novel is finished, but it is bad, very very bad. Really it should be our ‘Trunk’ novel. That one book that never sees the light of day, but its a good story. The characters are a little carbon copy of each other but that can be worked on. If we were to start work on this one again it would be a complete re-write, well maybe aside for the ending that is (It’s pretty cool if I do say so myself). I would also need of convince Owen that it was worth starting again with this one. We have not spoken about it for a long time as we have other stories we’re working on.

I am not sure how I work best just yet as when I am working on only one project I get a little distracted by other ideas that I have, but when I am focusing on two or three projects I’m less likely to loose interest in the primary WIP.
At the moment I am editing Avoiding The Game and brainstorming ideas for Project Apollo, and with Project Phoenix I am thinking through how to make it work and how to make the protagonist more sympathetic to the reader.
I do think I need to get things wrapped up quicker (I can hear people yelling at me in agreement as I type that lol) I am thinking of giving pen and paper for a first draft another go. When I was writing Project Phoenix most of it was done this way. I would do the first draft with pen and paper and when I typed it up I would edit it as I went which if I remember correctly streamlined the process quite well. If I do this now then I could print off the second draft for an out loud read through and then the changes that this brings up would be done and that would be my final draft. Then it would be off to Beta readers for their thoughts.

How do you prioritise your work and how do you write and then edit what you have written? Don’t be shy, feel free to comment and join the conversation 🙂