Do Writers Practice Serial Monogamy?

… between sheets of paper

It’s the first time I write a headline that looks like a Cosmo cover teaser.
They’re still around, by the way, $2.99. Is that cheap? The last Vogue, with Anna and Meryl on the cover, sells for $26, ouch. It’s a special issue because the April one costs ‘only’ $4.60. It’s been years since I gave in to the guilty pleasure of grabbing one of these glossy pieces of puff in a train station or an airport shop and my price gauge is completely off.

Okay, back to monogamy …

I wandered on that path of thought because of a habit I probably share with some of the writers reading this. I think about my stories in bed before going to sleep and in that quiet time just before getting up. Some of my favorite scenes and lines of dialogue come from there. I have multiple projects in various stages of development bouncing around in my head at any given time, but I always fall asleep and wake up with the story I’m actively working on. And the process will repeat night after night. Same story, same character. Yep, monogamy. For the duration.

Comparing books to relationships is nothing new. From the glib ‘You better love it because you’re going to spend a lot of time with it’ to the, in my opinion, slightly creepy ‘This book is my baby!’

For fun and the heck of it, let’s push the analogies. A flash story, less than a thousand words (two pages), is a quickie. A short story is anything between a weekend tryst and a summer romance. A book is definitely an affair, with moments of bliss, anxiety, anger, despair, jubilation, and fun. Smooth sailing and rough seas. In some cases—I’m thinking of George R.R. Martin and Game of Thrones—it’s a marriage. When Arthur Conan Doyle threw Sherlock Holmes off the Reichenbach Falls it was murder because divorce wasn’t possible. And he had to bring the man back which adds an ironic counterpoint considering Doyle’s interest in spiritualism and his belief in life after death.

I’m always impressed with writers who can work on multiple projects at the same time. Novel A in the morning and Novel B in the afternoon. One of them might be an initial draft, the other could be in editing and revision stages. These authors are the polygamists among us. People with such remarkably organized minds that they can set a book or story aside and switch to another in a matter of hours without losing their concentration. Like these guys who have a family in Seattle and another in Milwaukee. I can’t do that. I need to complete a task before my brain can change gears and move to something else.

(photo M.E. Proctor)

That doesn’t mean I have to finish a book or story and get it out of the door to be able to start on a different one, but I need to complete a stage of the ‘production process’. Most of the times, it means typing the final period on a draft. It can also be the end of a round of editing. If I don’t work that way, let things hang, and jump into something else, I run the risk of not going back to the work. One of my book projects has been sitting in my files for five years, stuck two thirds down the road. Again, it’s a bit like relationships. If you don’t pick up the phone to call or write that email, there comes a time when it becomes impossible to reconnect.

Four months in, this year has been typical of my serial writing love life. First, I lived with a short story for a couple of weeks. Then I did a bunch of articles and guest posts for the release of Kansas City Breakdown. Two-three days of hunkering down with each of those.

After the short, shallow hook-ups, I was ready for a serious emotional commitment. The kind that doesn’t leave any room for anything else. I did a final reread of The Way You Say My Name, the third book in the Declan Shaw series, scheduled for release in September. A Declan book is a highly-charged adrenaline affair that always drives me to distraction. You’ll find me staring at nothing, not hearing what’s being said to me, totally absorbed, and grumpy when I’m pulled out of the trance. Once the reread of Name was done, I wasn’t in the mood to let the temperature cool down. I wanted more. The draft of what might become Book #4 (if my publisher is interested) needed rewriting. I spent April with it. Eating and drinking with it. Sleeping with and dreaming of it. It only has a working title for now: Hot Box. The story takes place in July, in West Texas. Dry heat, they say. Right. You have beer in that cooler?

Russell Thayer, my retro-noir writing partner has been nudging me about a follow-up to Kansas City Breakdown—we’ve been brainstorming on and off for months—and I kept telling him: “not yet, I’m not ready yet, I have Declan on the brain”.
When April drew to a close, I wrote what I know is a place holder final line:

“Tonight we’ll go to a nice place and I’ll tell you how justice was served in the West.”

I’ll let Hot Box rest for a few months before going back in for another round, with eyes open and a clear head. In the meantime, I told Russell that I was ready for a new adventure featuring Tom Keegan and Vivian Davis. For the past couple of nights, I’ve been thinking of a cool scene somewhere toward the end of the book. Tom is having a conversation with this woman who is a …

No. I won’t jinx it. Patience. You’ll see!