Irons in the Fire
February 26, 2020

About a year ago, I wrote about Jung and his two different kinds of 
creative neuroses[1]. I'm definitely the kind of writer whose cup is always
"overflowing" with the creative urge and so have to deal with it  through daily 
writing. But even I have times where I'll suddenly lose energy on  a project, 
where looking at the tail end of what I wrote the day before gives no hint of 
what I should add to it today. I look at the paper (or the screen) and after a 
few minutes of fruitless staring, set it aside or close the file.

And if I only had that one project to work on, I'd be in trouble. However, I try
to have several irons in the fire simultaneously, so that if I'm stuck on one
project, I can simply pull another out and work on that. On occasion, I've had
to look at two or three projects before I found one that I felt like diving
into, but I've never had it happen that there was nothing I couldn't
productively work on.

This is hardly a new idea. The early 20th Century lecturer Edward H. Griggs
wrote in his book The Use of the Margin[2]" that both da Vinci and Goethe 
understood the secret "of turning from one form of action to another, without 
wasteful friction, and making the second action rest you from the first."

Having multiple projects means, too, that each is in a different stage of
writing--one just needs to be polished and sent out, one is fully drafted, one
is a rough draft, and one is little more than disjointed paragraphs. If I
realize that I don't feel like looking at an early draft of one project, I can
simply turn to another that requires more editing work. Or if I feel I've gotten
stuck at a plot twist in one story, I can turn to an essay instead.

There are downsides, of course, to having many irons in the fire. One is that
it's quite possible to have a project peter out part-way through, die on the
vine, and never get finished--a problem I admit I'm prone to. Another is that
it's easy to run away from all your current projects by "starting" yet another.
I try to control this by limiting the number of active projects I can have at
any one time. Currently, that's one translation project, two non-fiction
projects and two fiction projects, for a total of five. Project number six gets
sketched out, but I don't allow myself to actually begin writing it until the
appropriate category has an opening.

I do allow for short, pop-up projects--like this blog post--ones I can finish in
a day and which don't count towards my total number of active projects. This
lets me add even a bit more variety in my usual routine.

As with all writing advice, this may not work for you. But try keeping a couple
of irons in the fire and see how it goes. Your productivity may actually
increase.

[1] https://www.andrewgudgel.com/blog/empty-cups-and-silent-muses.txt
[2] https://archive.org/download/useofmargin00grig/useofmargin00grig.pdf

(c) 2020 by Andrew Gudgel 
email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com