Breaking the Rules
Why I Want To Write Two Books Simultaneously
Interestingly, this week, I knew what I wanted to write about; I often ‘wing’ it, but not today. I’ve been thinking about it for a few days now. So I’m splitting the newsletter into two parts.
The first part will be about how I plan to approach the two books I have in progress. The second part will be about the evolution and development of my dictation process, which seems to be working quite well using Apple Notes and the Record Audio function I first tried last week.
The Strange Thing About Switching Projects
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the strangeness of returning to my passion project, which we’ll label as ‘Primary’ or A, and the other learning project, ‘Secondary’ or B, where I wanted to learn more of the craft before tackling the Primary. Now, the bizarre thing is that as soon as I dropped B and started again on Project A, I started having ideas about B again, which was very odd. What to do?
I asked Chat GPT for the consensus and advice of authors and the writing community for writing two books in parallel. The general advice is, yes, you can do it, but with guardrails. Here is ChatGPT’s short answer:
“Short answer: plenty of published writers work on two books in parallel—and plenty warn against it. The ‘considered opinion’ is: it’s fine if you put guardrails in place so you still finish things. Without guardrails, context-switching becomes stealth procrastination.”
What, you may ask, is stealth procrastination? Me too, so I asked for clarification:
Switching to the other book exactly when a scene gets hard.
“Just refining the outline/world-building/research” for hours.
Tuning tools, templates, fonts, or filing notes.
Endless craft videos/articles instead of drafting today’s pages.
Etc.
I’m going to give it a go anyway. It should give me more creative freedom to have both books in progress in parallel. I want to complete them in a reasonable time. But the ideas that keep surfacing about the other book than the one I’m working on pains me. Yes, I can make a few notes, but will they mean anything after a few months? Probably not?
So I asked a new ChatGPT 5, thinking mode, to come up with a plan of attack, and it came up with some pretty good ideas. The long and the short of it is that my primary project, which I started in 2017, will remain my priority until it reaches the second draft phase. When I reach that stage, the priorities may be swapped depending on how I see things.
I’ve only just realized, although I was vaguely aware before, that the primary doesn’t have an outline and will never have one. The secondary project does have an outline, a quite extensive one at that. Odd.
Primary: The Muddy Middle and Beyond
I always had a general idea of where the story started and where it finished, plus a lot of ideas for the muddy middle. There are a few places where I was a bit stuck, for example, a romantic interest for the young protagonist. I always felt slightly uncomfortable with it. Now, though, having read a lot more since I wrote that first draft, I can see that I can handle it without actually diving into the realms of romance fiction. Another scene that comes to mind is when the antagonist is confronted by one of the main protagonists in a brief and unsatisfactory way. It either needs to be significantly extended or rewritten entirely.
A few things need to be extended, and, to be honest, I probably have another 20 to 40,000 words in me, purely for the muddy middle. The first act is largely done, with the finishing act fairly well sketched out. As is normal for a first draft, the prose needs much tidying and improving, but there are no major plot holes yet. That’s a job for the second draft and the full-on editing process.
I want to ensure that the characters developed in this book are in a position to be used and abused in subsequent books if necessary. A trilogy sounds to be a real possibility. I guess time will tell.
Secondary: The Outlined Approach
The secondary book is in a similar development phase, although much earlier in the process. I only had a brief idea for this, which I’ve since expanded into a half-decent outline. The writing process will likely be quite different, with several passes through the outline to keep track of ideas, plot points, and character arcs. As mentioned above, this will likely become the primary once the current primary is in the editing phase.
I have a lot of ideas throughout, not just the start and the end, but also for the infamous muddy middle. The end is slightly more shadowy and unfocused. I know the last scene but not so much the lead-up to it. This book could also be the first book in a series, possibly five. There’s a reason why there would be five, which I’m not going to get into right now.
The thing is, I’m 65, so I need to get my skates on if I’m going to get eight books done before I’m too old to see and type or before I pop my clogs. If I manage to get this lot done, I’ll be a happy chappy. I’ll be satisfied even if I only ever finish one book.
To help me achieve my creative goals, I need to improve my dictation skills. But no matter how much I practice, without the right technology to support me, all the practice in the world won’t help. Rather, it could hinder my creativity. I touched on using Apple Notes last week, and specifically the Record Audio function. Read on to see how this went.
Dictation Testing
I need my dictation process to be robust and reliable, so I’m testing. I like to walk around and dictate, preferably with my phone in my back pocket and my AirPods picking up the words. The only syntactical commands that seem to work using Notes are ‘new line’, possibly a comma, and a period. For the rest, forget about it. Quotes and double quotes might be a real problem; more on this later.
The first test run’s long and short was that it didn’t work well. But I think I’ve figured out part of the problem. I started the recording, then set the phone to standby mode before I put it in my pocket. Or, perhaps I wasn’t speaking as clearly as I might? Time to try again, and this time with better enunciation.
For the second test, I handled things a bit differently. In the first test, I just switched the phone off, so I still had the controls on the lock screen of the phone. The only thing I did differently this time was to minimize the Notes app, then switch it off.
What’s the point of all of these tests? I need to have my hands free. If I’m taking a dog for a walk, for example, I don’t want to have to hold the phone all the time. I like to look around and enjoy the scenery. It worked a lot better this time. But, it doesn’t seem to handle things like quotes or other punctuation commands; that could be a real problem, especially when it comes to dictating dialogue. I am not too sure how I’m going to handle that yet; I’ll figure that out another time.
Final Thoughts
I thought I’d do something different for the final thoughts. I’m using the straight dictation function that’s available on the keyboard for the phone, which seems to be OK, but I know for a fact that it will stop working after just a minute or two anyway.
ChatGPT came up with a plan of attack for writing two books in parallel, starting with a four-week experiment. It’s a little bit ambitious because it’s assuming I’m a full-time writer, which of course I’m not. Over the next few weeks, and possibly for the rest of the year, I could well be back to working four days a week. Which gives me even less time for writing but more time to think and refill my creative well, I suppose.
The second part of the dictation test…? Oh well, as expected, the ‘normal’ dictation function just stopped recording, for no apparent reason. It looks like the Record Audio function in Notes has to be the dictation method of choice, for now anyway.
The keyboard dictation will be fine for short notes, but nothing longer, especially if I want to record a long passage of dialogue, which I’m still not too sure how I’m going to handle, by the way.
I think I will likely have to put a name tag before each line of dialogue to distinguish each character, then start a new line for the second part of the dialogue, not too sure. Well, I’ll figure it out and let you all know when I get around to it.
That’s enough of my ramblings for one week. I’m grabbing a beer. Cheers.