Is it okay to write two novels at once?

Back to writery stuff about writering.

I've gone back and forth about this question over the years. A long time ago I used to write two novels (unrelated) in parallel, but as none of those have ever seen the light of day, it seemed safe to assume that this was not the world's greatest writing technique. I enjoyed it and got plenty done... but you've never heard of Dog Dinner, have you? No. And yes, that is a bad title. What of it?

We all have our different writing styles, favourite places to be, our preferences regarding paper or word processor, which underpants we should have on. But, should you ever take on two projects at once?

For clarification, I'm not talking about the writing of a series of books all in one go. If you plan from the outset to do a trilogy or whatever, bang 'em all out from the outset, don't pause. I wrote a sequel to Macadamian Pliers, but only after writing a couple of other books first, and man was that a task, so difficult to pick the threads up (and if people think A Graveyard Visible is dark, I'd love to dish them up a slice of Mac 2). What I'm discussing here is two completely separate stories with no characters or settings in common.

The closest I've ever come in the last 5 or 6 years to writing two stories at once would be during the creation of my latest novel A Graveyard Visible, which is currently undergoing an incredibly interesting pre-release process of review gathering - that's code for 'the reviews I'm getting are all over the place'. Halfway through, I stopped writing it. Couldn't go any further. It was dead. Tens of thousands of words in, I buried it (only ever happened once before, with a pirate story called Shanty for the Soulless which I'm currently considering for revival). So, after a period of glumness (we writers a miserable bunch of bastards) I got stuck into a new novel. I was most of the way through that when A Graveyard Visible dug itself back out of its admittedly shallow grave (one of those big light-bulb moments came out of nowhere - you gotta love 'em) and I hammered on until the end.

This is what you want - 

a bloody big idea

Since all of those shenanigans, I've finished another novel called Ten Doors Down (about a girl who breaks her phone and has to take on an incredibly strange job in order to save for another), and started my current project, Polka. It's about pigs. Oh yeah, a city of them. A whole society of pigs, a complete world, and everything a world is made of. It's become way bigger than I expected. I'm usually pretty good at getting a novel wrapped up in 80k or under, but with Polka and his personal journey I'm sailing towards eighty thousand words pretty rapidly and the middle is nowhere in sight. Now, I think the realisation of that fact freaked me out. There's a lot of work to do, and everything has to remain consistent. Polka, the titular pig, has led a small life in the walled (and guarded) city when we meet him in the first chapter, but when there's a dramatic change at the library where he works and a rebellious friend returns, his whole world flips and he starts to see what's on the other side. It's far more political than anything else I've written. It's about the disconnect between politicians and the people they govern. It's about loss, how large the pain can feel and yet how small it can seem to the world around you. It's about personal empowerment. It's about what a drop can do to an ocean. In some respects, 'Polka' is almost a playground for me to grab hold of a lot of the issues that affect me, to turn them round and hold them up in new lights.

Two months ago, it slowed to a near-stop. Not a complete halt, mind you. There were still a few words trickling onto the page. This was not a catastrophe of A Graveyard Visible proportions. The story was still there, and I knew where I was heading (or at least a had a piece of the map). But the weight of it...

We writers are always looking 

for that ray of hope.

The usual stuff - a change of activity, leaving it alone for a day or two, going for a walk, trying a chapter from a new angle - wasn't really giving me the bump start I needed. The only thing for it was a holiday. Not merely a real-life trip away for me (although by all the known gods I love getting away somewhere new). I had to get myself off to a new world.

The sneakiest and peakiest sneak-peak

of Flip.

The new one's called Flip (this flipping is a lot more literal than Polka's series of revelations), and for now I won't say much more, other than there's humans, and magic, and monsters. Starting a new story is always brilliant, and even though I'd had a false start with this one back in NaNoWriMo, a second attempt at the start of February went very quickly indeed, and I got a lot done (for me, anyway) in a short space of time. Now, I had a bit of a concern here. Writing lots is great, but what if I just kept writing Flip, and Polka died? What if I couldn't go back? The thing is, I was writing again, the energy was back, and as soon as I returned to Polka, the pages started flowing again.

Now, if they were both set in similar human fantasy worlds, and both had magic, and both had horror elements, and both were from the same point of view, then I don't think this would be feasible. There would be bleed between the two pieces. There would be forgetfulness, there would be a stylistic blur, and it would simply become too difficult. However, the fact that Polka and Flip are so very different actually helps me bounce from one to the other. Flip may never be finished. But if it's only reason to exist is to help me get to the end of Polka, then I will be forever grateful.

To conclude, I think it's possible to pull off this two novels at once thing... but only if both stories are very different. There can be little-to-no cross-over in regards of character type, theme or, if possible, style. Otherwise, everything could blend together and you'll end up with two indistinct piles of mess.

The moral here? Go on holiday, real or imagined. It's good for you.

Laters.

P.S. A Graveyard Visible is out soon - April 27th 2018. The horror novel that reviewers love to love, or love to hate. Go pre-order it now. The dead won't wait much longer...

I'm an author without a website!

I know, shocking isn't it?

Actually, it's really bad that I've left it so long. It's only because I've committed myself to updating this blog with info on how my promotion work is going (long sentence, breeeeeathe) that I even realised I'd made such an oversight.

During my research into the things authors should have/should be doing/cannot possibly function without, post after post after post reiterated the same thing: as an author, you must have a website. It's essential. It's like your store front, it's a central hub for everything you do, it's the first thing prospective readers are going to look for.

Here's an example of what I'm on about. This is taken from Publishing... And Other Forms of Insanity. It's an amazing website for authors of all levels. Honestly, there's so much content here it's ridiculous.

Even if you have not yet been published, you absolutely MUST have an author's website. Websites are not optional; they are a requirement for anyone with something to sell. (Authors are not only selling their writing, they are selling themselves.) At the very least, put up your first page (bio and photo), a blog, and a contact page. If you want to talk about your current writing project, do so on your blog.

Not optional. A requirement. Lordy.

(Go here to read more of this article, and then get yourself totally lost in all the links: http://publishedtodeath.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/everything-i-did-wrong-part-2-designing.html)

Long past time to get cracking, then.

Now, I should say that I did have a website already in place - and it's still up. Macadamian Pliers was due for release, and I knew I had to at least try to do something to get that novel some space on the interweb, and everything has a website these days. But instead of making an author website with a page or two about the book with links to go and buy it, I did something slightly different. And by slightly I mean radically. The website I created was put together from the point of view of the novel's characters. Yeah, that's right, it's a site from within the Macadamian Pliers universe, as if he was real and Cherry and Frank were real and all the stuff that happened was real. Yeah, I did that. Spent hours on it. Thought I was really clever.

I suppose it might have been clever if I was an established author, or there was lots of buzz around the book and people were aware of it, but in hindsight it just came across as confusing.

It's still online, I can't bring myself to kill it off - this is the link: http://ihatemacadamianpliers.weebly.com/

So, Life-Threateningly Important Point Number 01 - you must build your brand first. You must be clear. Do not muddy the waters. Save the funky tricks for later, when there's a chance that someone might know who you are. Put yourself in the position of a potential reader/buyer coming to your website. Show them the most important things first. Latest book. Upcoming releases. Make sure your reader/buyer can see these products and can get to them easily. They want to know who you are and what you've written, so make it easy for them. Not like I did.

I've kept a couple of aspects of this website made by an insane version of myself, and put them in the new one, although they are far from the main feature. The books are up front, everything else is there to explore if the visitor wishes.

Ah, straight away, Life-Threateningly Important Point Number 02 - Get the books up front! With links TO BUY! The first thing you see now on my brand new website is the front cover of my upcoming novel, with a link to Pre-Order. Actually, I've literally right this second just discovered the pre-order button is not functioning. So....

Life-Threateningly Important Point Number 03 - Check EVERYTHING. (These Life-Threateningly Important Points are coming thick and fast all of a sudden.) And check it again. And AGAIN. When I first published my new website, I trumpeted loudly about it (always happens after too many dry roasted peanuts) on Facebook, Twitter, all that stuff, confident that it was looking good, even though a few of the lesser pages weren't yet in place. A day or two later, I found the time to have another look at it. There were two pages of wildlife photography hanging over from the original template, there was a weird heading about 'Fotographia' that I couldn't get rid of, links weren't working, nightmare, nightmare, nightmare. It looked incredibly unprofessional (and don't you dare say it still does, I will cry). Check your work, people. Check it, and check it again.

Really, all of this should have been done already. I just put making a real author website off. I told myself, what difference will it make anyway? And I still don't know if it will make any difference at all. However, and here's...
Life-Threateningly Important Point Number 04 - Your books CANNOT sell themselves. You need to do everything you can, and if sites like Publishing and Other Forms of Insanity are telling you to have an author website, then damn well get one. Make it yourself, get a friend to do it, pay for it to be done, whatever. But get it done. Maybe it won't be much help. But if you don't have one, then it DEFINITELY can't generate sales. It's your space to talk about your work, to show off your work, so why not? I thought of it this way - Every time I read a Clive Barker book or think about one, I head to his website to catch up on what he might be doing next (more specifically, when is he going to release the next bloody Abarat book). So if I'm doing that, others are.

It all makes sense.

Honestly, take advice from someone who's done everything wrong.

(Edit: I wrote a piece about websites and didn't even put a link into mine. Amazing, right? www.steveconoboy.com )

Laters

*******Pre-order A Graveyard Visible on Amazon now!*********