As is usual with me, I’m working on more than one project at once. In fact, I’m working on four, with a fifth tickling my brain.

• Project 1 is the newest paranormalish romance novel of my new series, and I swear to you I feel at the moment like I’m mindlessly rambling and stuff is just tumbling out and only some of it is good. This is how you write a first draft, but it irks me that some of it is pure nonsense.
• Project 2 is a “based on a true story” sort of memoir thing that I’m doing under another pen name, and I am stalled. Just stalled. I can’t seem to move forward with it and nothing is coming when I stare at the screen and honestly, I’m rethinking writing the damn thing at all even though I’m 42,000 words in already.
• Project 3 is the print version of Eight Nights At Sea – which is really more about formatting since the damn thing is already written, but of course as I’m going through it and formatting it for print, the editor in me is rewording and reworking and re-re-re-everything and I just need to stop already. I will edit myself to death if you let me.

• Project 4 is going the same way as project 3 – I’m reworking my YA novel which is already written but not good enough even though it’s been edited a thousand times and even had a professional editor give it a once-over. I’m getting anal, here.
• Project 5 is a new book that wants me to write it I want to write that’s sneaking in and eating my brainmeats. Weirdly enough, it’s chick lit, which is a category I have never dabbled in before. Not sure where this is going, but the premise is seriously intriguing.

The bottom line on most of this is I either can’t get properly started or I’m done and not letting myself be done. This is a peculiar writer’s torment, where you either feel like you’re not writing enough or you feel like you’re writing total crap. Where you want to be (ideally) is somewhere in the middle of that cranking out incredible plot twists, cliffhangers, poignant passages, belly laughs and mind-blowing reveals at a steady pace.

‘Cause your stupid writer brain tells you all the good writers do that, even when you read article after article from great writers who tell you their first drafts were crap or that they battle writer’s block, too.

This writer thing….it’s maddening.  And I’m procrastinating. Back to work.