Isn’t it too early to think about your next project?
No.
Because thinking about your next project will get you through November way easier than spending all of your waking hours thinking about the one you’re writing this month.
Because, if you think about the next project, it means there will be a future for you and your writing, and you won’t spontaneously self-combust before the year is over.
Because, when you think about the next project, it helps with making you believe you will finish this project—and that belief, I’ve found in the past few years, helps with the actual finalization of a story.
Because, when you think about the next thing, you get to dream, and there’s basically nothing easier than dreaming—and nothing more satisfying. Dreaming is what gets us going, and what builds up the anticipation which, I’m quite sure, helps boost the immune system by flooding your poor, tortured writer’s body with positive energy.
Because, if you’ve been writing a novel for a while now, you might—just might—know where it’s going, and most of the things which are going to happen next, so that devious, plotting part of your mind gets used a little less often than in the early stages. Why let it rot? (Except if you’re writing a series, which happens to me more often than not, lately—in that case, you’re plotting as you go, because everything needs to tie in neatly anyway, and people appreciate longterm thinking in a writer.)
And because, after all, writing claustrophobia is a real thing that happens and it’s shit and it makes you feel like you will never again be able to write something that’s unrelated to the exact thing that you’re writing right now, and you’ll never be able to think of a setting or a plot different enough, and everything is gone and all that’s ahead of you is the next thousand words in the exact same novel you’ve been writing for ages and are we there yet?
So, let me reiterate: what the actual hell are you going to write next?
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Photo by mrhayata.
Vesna Kurilic 