Since January I’ve been working almost exclusively on a YA project in Danish, which is a bit removed from the US writing world. My daughter wanted a story, and I had one in the back of my head that seemed just right for the occasion.

That novel is now finished, and my daughter got to be first reader (of course). She liked it, thought the ending was really exciting, and was well entertained throughout, so I’m counting that as a huge success. And even better, she wasn’t too shy to point out my typos. I’ll make a grammar nerd of her yet 🙂

So what’s next? Finishing the YA novel and getting it off to a publisher has first priority, but while it makes the rounds to three or four other readers, I have to choose between a lot of other writing projects. So I’m weaving back and forth between committing to one of the following projects:

• Finish this round of revisions on a Space Opera Monster — which means rewriting a number of scenes from scratch because the existing scenes don’t make sense after the first half of the story was revised. They’re also out of synch because the revision so far has developed some actual personality in the characters, so their current actions and choices no longer make sense… I’ve been working on this story for a long, long time. I ought to just get it over and done with, but it’s also quite painful to go through it again and again. But the thing is, there’s a collective of characters that I really like, and a story about genocide and space colonialism gone wrong that’s exciting to tell.

• It would also be a lot of fun to devote myself full time to that new collaborative project with my writing buddy Mette. At WorldCon she and Arly Sorg talked about undead who lose their memories, and we have developed the perfect setting for a supernatural mystery that will bring this idea to life. And there’s shiny worldbuilding to develop and characters to flesh out, and a mystery to concoct, and it’s all new and glorious, so woohoo? Right. Except we’ve started the actual writing, and it’s not exactly looking like the notes in our heads, so at the moment I’m accusing my imagination of overselling the project. But I’m writing for an audience (of one, so far) and that feels… surprisingly glorious! And shared burdens are half burdens, so I wonder if this isn’t what I’ll be doing for the foreseeable future.

• Well, of course I also have a new short story and a novelette I should be finishing. They’re both more than halfway done, so they shouldn’t take too long to write. Right? Right! Because it’s not like I write short stories at half the speed I write novels, is it? And it doesn’t help that one of them is a story where chronology has ceased to matter… which makes it somewhat difficult to keep track of… but also fun to write… but difficult… but at least easier to finish than a novel, right?

• Did I mention that I spent two consecutive nanowrimos cooking up 80.000 words of another space opera novel? I looked it over recently, and it’s actually pretty good. In shambles, of course, and about 30.000 words from completion, but hey, I really should finish this. November’s coming up, so maybe this is where I’m going.

And meanwhile, back in the batcave, my mind is producing new ideas every week, every one of them more glorious and alluring than the next, and I really have no other way to deal with them than put them on a list of ideas.

I’ll figure it out, but I can’t help wonder if I’m the only writer with this problem.