I’m not sure how more seasoned writers maintain their focus when writing the third, fourth, or sixteenth book in a series. I’m trying hard to focus on Hunter, the third and final book in my Legend of the Silver Hunter series, but I keep getting distracted by ideas for other stories. I try and just jot down notes on these other stories while drafting chapters for Hunter. Maybe, I got overly ambitious in striving to write two books in one year. I read all the articles about authors getting slammed or praised for putting out multiple books in a year and wonder where do I fall on the spectrum. I new to the field of self-publishing authors, I still work a 40 hour a week regular job, take a few freelance graphic design jobs on the side, and cram in an hour or two of writing a day.
Sometimes, I marvel at writing 3K words (my personal record is 5K in one day) and other times I think I’ve done a fantastic job if I managed to turn on the computer, open up my MS Word document and type in 100 words. I’ve been doing creative writing since I was in high school back in the early 1980s. It’s always been either for myself, for a role-playing gaming group, or a class assignment for English class. My writing, my worlds and the people who live in them have never been for anyone besides myself, other than those assignments in either high school or college.
I don’t know how many other authors feel that their writing is as much a chance to escape reality as reading a book someone else has written. I get lost in my worlds, even the ones based on our reality because there is a twist in the fabric that creates a difference, an escape from the mundane into the magical. For me characters, like my own Kieran and Cory are real people, I get to visit with and call friends or family. When I was a kid, I dreamed of exploring magical realms like Piers Anthony’s Xanth, or fighting the forces of Boscone with Kimball Kinnison of E.E. Doc Smith’s Lensmen.
While my own books are too mature in nature for children, I hope that those who have read my books found a moment of escape into a world where magic works and Happily Ever After seems like a real possibility.