After much consideration over the past week concerning my second novel work in progress, I’ve decided to wrap up work on the first part (1/3) and clear off the back burner until I start editing for the first draft of my first novel in October. This wasn’t an easy decision.

First, I no longer have the motivation to continue writing the second novel since I have a self-imposed editing deadline for the first novel, and I didn’t want to stop in middle of part two when I could make a clean break after finishing part one.

Second, since the second novel is a diversion between editing rounds of the first novel, I couldn’t give it my fullest attention without impacting the first novel. The second novel requires a complete breakdown analysis of the first part before I can outline and write the next two parts. An extended break should help with that.

Third, the back burner has unfinished short stories and poems that I would like to finish and clear out before I start something new. With the summer break coming to an end at many short story magazine publishers, I’m expecting a flood of returned SASEs bearing rejection slips, some acceptance letters, and no money to pay for anything. I’m always tweaking or rewriting a piece to make it better before sending out again. These admin tasks always take more time if I don’t plan for it.

Maybe I’m too lazy to pound out a 400-page rough draft of a novel in three months, or maybe six months is a suitable amount of time to write a novel. I hope editing my first novel goes faster than that. If everything works out, I’ll be working on the second part of my second novel in January. Or maybe not.

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NOTE: This blog post was first published on Once Upon An Albatross… blog.