Many Worlds

You wouldn't want to be in my brain. It's an overwhelming place.

I have the same parts as everyone else, of course; places for my public persona, my private persona, things that I like and dislike.

But the creative side of my brain is, at best, chaotic.

The best example that I can give is my current reading and writing stats.

I'm in the process of rereading a book series in preparation for the release of the final book in the trilogy (which comes out today, so I won't have it finished). I'm also reading another book from my last bookstore haul. And I'm listening to an audiobook. And reading another novel on my Kindle while I'm on the exercise bike.

I'm far behind on my progress to my end-of-year reading goal of 60 books, but if I continue reading this summer, I'm sure I'll catch up.

I used to be a staunch "one book at a time" kind of reader. I was afraid that the worlds would get mixed up in my head, and that I wouldn't be able to keep track of the plots and characters. But once I got my Kindle and started listening to audiobooks, I found myself breaking that rule and enjoying jumping back and forth between stories. It was like I was giving myself multiple escape routes from the real world whereas before there was only one.

But we haven't even gotten to the writing...

I finished the third draft of my latest novel, Awakening, in early April. By mid-April, while I was on my spring break trip, I was putting out the call for beta readers to give me feedback before I moved on to hiring an editor, cover designer, and working on formatting and self-publishing. The story got a well-earned rest from my eyes, and I turned my mind to other projects.

The complications came when I realized how many different projects that I could be working on.

I thankfully began fully outlining the plot of novel ideas, so that when I'm ready, I can dive into writing the full novel. I have at least two of these outlines ready to go, yet I found myself returning to the last novel that I had attempted to get beta read and decided to do heavy revisions.

None of my beta readers had finished Divide and Conquer, so I decided to return to it with fresh eyes now that I'd written a novel that I felt was much more polished, and I felt that I could apply some of the same processes to improve this one. I quickly realized that it was going to take a lot of work; the one piece of feedback that I got from all of my beta readers in the opening chapters was that they were overwhelmed with all of the information being thrown at them. When I went back in, I realized that they were right (and that was probably why none of them had finished it).

So I started reverse outlining Divide and Conquer, mapping out plot points and characters, and making notes to myself on things that I wanted to change or improve. During this process - which isn't nearly finished yet - I realized that I'm going to have to split this into at least two novels. Which stressed me out slightly because I already had ideas for the sequel to it.

On top of doing revisions there, a few of my beta readers returned their feedback for Awakening. So now I'm working on transferring their notes into a spreadsheet so that I can look for commonalities and think about what needs to be changed.

Oh yes, and I just finished transcribing an unnamed novel that I'd been writing by hand while my students were state testing and I wasn't allowed to be on my computer. It's my first time writing in a dual first-person point of view, and I'm having a lot of fun with it.

So for those of you keeping score, I'm living in about seven different worlds, at the moment. Sometimes I'm amazed that I'm able to keep them all straight. It's chaotic at times, to be sure. I'm constantly getting inspiration for one or the other, and my notes app on my phone really gets a workout. It's been easier since I'm on summer break, but there are still plenty of things also vying for my attention.

I do long for the day when my reading and writing are all that I have to think about. Perhaps then, my brain won't feel so chaotic.