Carving Out Writing Time

Carving out writing time for a new book is proving more difficult than I expected. I am in reading mode once again, reviewing the work of fellow writers and editing manuscripts that I wrote in the past. I recently released three new books, Tryst Twist, The Reckoning, and Wandering Belle, this last month. One of the books was a new creation for this year, and the other two were written more than a decade ago. They've been collecting dust in the electronic file box on my flash drive.

It was nice to be able to edit those two books and put them into print. The Reckoning's story deals with a rather dark subject, human trafficking on an urban scale, and was more of a challenge. Wandering Belle has changed shape so many times over the years that I barely recognized her once I finished the final edits.

To keep the momentum of polishing past novels, I recently started editing The Surrogate, which also was written over a decade earlier. It has been fun reworking it. Some of the technology mentioned in the first couple of rough drafts of that novel was seriously outdated, so I have upgraded the main character's VCR to a DVD player, but now I'm worried that I should have just given her a subscription to Netflix, as that's the happening-now way to watch movies. The social upheaval that intrigued me and prompted me to write that story is no longer at the top of the list of society's hotbed issues. New controversies top that list today. Still, I think readers will find the story interesting, if and when it gets to publication stage.

With the respect to the two nonfiction books on the burner right now, I haven't been doing as much. Carving out research time is even tougher than finding time to actually draft chapters. As usual, as soon as I begin working on any project two or three new ones come to mind and I find myself getting distracted by those and losing my momentum on projects already in the pipeline. I've admitted my procrastination issues before. They haven't changed.

I'm off to write the next book review, which you can find at my website Idyllbooks.com or at my review blog, show-me-reviews.blogspot.com . In the meantime, I hope you're carving out time for those activities that keep you interested and challenged everyday.