Should I do this?

[Garon]

I want to start making a second novel. I already have one novel in the ongoing that is being read by twenty people. I don’t make novel's for the sake of a large audience, but for myself. And I’m interested in asking those who have several works in ongoing's at the same time. Is it worth it and how do you do it?

 

[QuercusMalus]

There are both positives and negatives to doing multiple stories at once.
The first, and most obvious negative is time- if you're working on one, you're not working on the second. It's really easy to drop or neglect a story because you get caught up in something else.
The largest positive is by having a second work, especially if it is very different in setting and/or style, is it can keep you from getting bored and burned out creatively. You might find yourself doing one thing on the second story that inspires you on the first.

 

[prognastat]

I have 3 simultaneously ongoing novels. What I can say is I would probably do better with readership if I focused it all on one story and could manage daily releases on that one story, but I still do it the way I do because when I worked on just one story all the time it was leading to burn-out real fast.

I can only manage 2 weekly releases per story now, but I still prefer it.

So if you are just doing it for fun I would say give doing multiple at a time a try, if your goal is to increase the readership as much/fast as possible though then reducing how much content you are releasing per week for a story is going to harm growth.

 

[J_Chemist]

At the end of the first Arc of my main story, I attempted to draw up plans for a second and even wrote a prologue for it. However, time constraints and the creative requirement to run them simultaneously was enough to tell me no. If I'd run it, I'd have to juggle chapter releases and would need to spend more time organizing my thoughts and splitting my creative focus across the two. My stories always have big, grand schemes and large worlds with several Cast members, so they take a lot to plan out.

Doing that for two at the same time would murder me.

 

[PancakesWitch]

im writing like nine novels at the same time lol

 

[Garon]

There are both positives and negatives to doing multiple stories at once.
The first, and most obvious negative is time- if you're working on one, you're not working on the second. It's really easy to drop or neglect a story because you get caught up in something else.
The largest positive is by having a second work, especially if it is very different in setting and/or style, is it can keep you from getting bored and burned out creatively. You might find yourself doing one thing on the second story that inspires you on the first.

Yes, the second novel helps not only to distract me to something else. But he also brings me ideas for the first novel. And I feel pleasure from the process, I am not worried about time. And my couple of readers have gotten used to my unstable schedule.

 

[Obsoleteness]

im writing like nine novels at the same time lol

Witchcraft! Get it? Because... I'll show myself out

 

[prognastat]

im writing like nine novels at the same time lol

So which demon did you sell your soul to? I might need to upgrade.

 

[Aleth08]

I personally like to focus on one novel at a time, though I do think of ideas for the next novel when I'm not writing.

 

[QuercusMalus]

One trick I have found for if I have an idea for another story, especially if in a different world/setting, is to write short stories based there. Could feature the character who will be in the story, but might not, could be related to what the story will be about, but might not. It helps both flesh out the world and give me a different creative outlet.

 

[Yule]

As much as I love writing, I try not to run multiple stories at once...I start getting plots mixed up, or confuse things between them, and eventually lose myself in the process. I also spend a lot of time proofreading and editing the backlog I have, which I probably couldn't do if I had a second novel.

I do sometimes veer off though. I'll sometimes have this huge urge to slack off and write something else, so when that urge strikes, I write something like a short story and leave it at that. I might post it, I might not, but it helps me with preventing burnout!

 

[CapitaoCaverna]

Do it!

Well, since readers aren't your goal, I won't talk very much about them, but some can read one of your stories and get interested in the other when otherwise they'd never look at it for some reason.

Now, while I suffer from a case of dropping stories because of time, I recommend you start a second one if that's something you're interested in.

In my experience, working on more than one story can give you the distance to look at the chapters in a new light. When I'm writing one chapter after another for the same story, I can get caught up in the pace and not notice things.

I have this image in my mind of what I'm doing and, if I don't pay attention or get too caught up in the writing, I may not notice that my vision of what I'm writing may not match the impression my readers are getting.

If I take a day to work on another story, and then get back to the chapter, I usually notice things I had missed, or the idea I wanted to portray in the chapter crystalizes, improving the experience.

On the other hand, yeah, you won't have as much time to work on the original fic you were writing.


Really, if you write mostly for yourself, I recommend you ask the question, DOES THIS NEW STORY INTEREST ME? WILL I REGRET NOT WRITING IT?

If it's just a whim, try to write a small chapter for fun, without much thought and get it out of your system, but if it's something you really like, don't let it go without at least trying.

 

[K5Rakitan]

Nothing worth doing is easy . . . at least that's what I keep telling myself when my toddler won't go to sleep or pees over the edge of the potty or kicks me in the face or . . .