I seem to be incapable of focusing on a single project. Much of that is because I have a limited time budget for writing in a week and I need to focus on some things over others.

The critical path is the serial. I'm less than 20 chapters from the end for the first draft and only two weeks ahead. My goal is to write two chapters a week until I get through the draft, but it is hard because I've been writing this for almost a year now. Actually, I've been doing this for 49 weeks now and I've posted a chapter every week for 45 of them. I think this probably my most consistent work ever; it isn't perfect, but I've enjoyed writing it and I learned a few new tricks. It does suffer from length though, this week I blew past the 300k word mark. (And I got fan mail from two people which just made my day.)

I always think I'm a screw up when it comes to doing things on a schedule and this is my attempt to produce consistent work and try to improve my quality at the same time. It is amazing, but I honestly still think I'm the little screw-up, lazy, and utterly strange kid I was in high school.

But, I want to be done with the serial. At least with the "how do I get this next paragraph" blahs that encourage me to play a game or brown the boards looking for new posts since I last checked thirty seconds ago. I know I can (fairly easily) write one chapter (6-8k words) but doubling my output is proving to be a bit difficult.

FOTS is on hold while I work on the serial. I'm already got hung up on it so might as let the writer's block ease up before I try again. I do have a nice list of notes to work on, plus I have "ideas" on how to fix the first thing. I really think that most of the problems are in the first third of the book, mainly because I have relatively slow build-ups for stories (more so for ones that will become multiple books if things go well).

I got a commission this week, which is cool. 15k words and a sequel to a previous commission. Most of my commissions come from a very small pool of people who are willing to throw the occasional buck at me for my style of fantasies. I like that, I just can't really post any of them. The commission is due at the end of the month, so I think I'm in good shape there.

I also have two other pieces in work, mostly as opportunity writing. BAM is a steampunk place that is in the same universe as FOTS. Actually, it touched against some secondary characters in FOTS (and KK, PD, COV, and DD which are the proposed master arc). I'm having fun, but it is remarkable how hard it is to develop a world in stories while not overwhelming the details. BAM is also work on writing shorter chapters and more concisely. Instead of my usual 6k chapters, I'm focusing on writing 2k with the same amount of information. If today's feedback is any guide, I have a while to get and the last few chapters were a bit rough.

I also have a non-fiction piece I've been struggling with for the last few years. I need to finish it, but it has enough emotional baggage with it that I find it difficult to work on it for more than a week or two before I have to stop.

This week, I also got two rejections. One was a local publisher who gave feedback and a request to resubmit. The other was for a romance piece and it was rejected because it was too similar to another piece in the anthology. This reminds me of the troll line.

I don't have to outrun the troll. I have to outrun you.

In this case, my piece wasn't as good as the other. Or the other was promised before mine. It doesn't really matter but I also don't know what to do it. I'm sitting on it while I wait for the responses on two other pieces I have out there (and hopefully will get a response in two weeks).

Needless to say, I have serious problems not writing. I mean, every time I'm going to "take a break" I just find myself writing something else new.

I can live with this problem.