Monday, July 30, 2012

Multi-Tasking

When I sold my first book back in the Dark Ages, my editor, Leslie Wainger, asked me if I had tried to have two projects going at the same time. No, I told her, I have to finish one before I start the next.

"Better learn," she told me.

Excellent advice. Some editors are really fast. They can turn around every aspect of a project in a very short time. Others work more at the pace of a hibernating bear. If I hadn't done what Leslie said, I'd be somewhere back around book thirty instead of somewhere around eighty.

It's not always easy. You can't just turn off the faucet on the big-scope, layered women's fiction, then turn on the faucet for the tighter, more intimate romantic suspense and expect it to flow. There's a transition period where the water trickles out about as clear as mud, and I'm pretty much stuck until it runs clear again.

Thank God, eventually it does run clear again!

No comments:

Post a Comment