Why Having Multiple Projects Is a Must for Writers

How to pick lots of work that can bring you success and joy

Image by Denise McQuillen from Pixabay

With a Type A personality, I have to admit that there’s something beautiful in being laser-focused on just one thing for a while. You can get into a state of flow that enables you to produce a draft more quickly.

But I’m also a realist. I’ve learned that, in most cases, it’s better to have multiple writing projects going at once. The benefits include

1. Pivoting to a different project that best suits your mood or attention level, which improves writing clarity, authenticity, and accuracy,
2. Staying active and feeling more productive even as you wait to hear back from beta readers, editors, agents, etc.,
3. Setting work aside to work out kinks more naturally, rather than trying to force solutions in the moment,
4. Being able to practice different types or styles of writing,
5. Improving time management through more serious task scheduling and prioritization, and
6. Being less stressed and allowing yourself to quit what doesn’t work because you know all of your eggs aren’t in one basket.

But this doesn’t mean you should overdo it. Ambition is great, but there are limits to how…