Patchwork Quilts and Procrastination

I'm beginning to think that choosing to write a weekly serial here on my blog was a huge mistake. I'm already kind of disappointed about the number of unfinished drawings that appear here. I don't want to add more unfinished work to that collection, and while I have a (very) basic outline for where the Mirror Soul story is going - there's a lot about Decker and his world that I haven't sorted out yet.

One of the reasons I've laid out my blog like this, with all sorts of different products on all sorts of different days, is because of the way I work (when I work, but I'll get to that later).

My mind is always racing. When I'm not drunk, I see novel and short story ideas (or things to draw or stories to run in D&D or Star Wars or whatever game we're playing next) in the world around me. I guess I'm lucky that my brain seems to have come equipped with an automatic plot generator attachment; It's never been hard for me to come up with ideas. Only to follow through with them.

Of course, there's a down side. I get wildly passionate about every idea that springs into my mind; I really believe in every story that passes through me - finished or not. The "David Wright" section of the Great Library in the Dreaming is full of some of the best novels never written.

I end up abandoning one project for another. Drawing this, writing one story instead of the other (which I was half-way through), ooh! What if I ran a D&D game based around the Tarrasque? Shit like that.

Happens all the time.

For instance. When I sat down to write this, I got an amazing idea for a GURPS campaign, wherein the Players run a band of Samurai making their way through the old west in search of the [MacGuffin], encountering cowboys and indians and getting caught up in all manner of Wild West Shenanigans. I actually started working on a Samurai Template before I remembered what I was supposed to be doing.

Truth be known, even ths blog is a distraction from the novel I'm supposed to be working on (although, today I have the excuse of being at my Mother's house and not having internet access, so I can't reach Google Drive, where I keep my manuscript and notes).

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I've been letting my imagination stop me from doing any real producing. I ought to keep a file on my computer (or phone, or Drive) that lets me record all these good ideas and then forget about them; instead of working a little bit on this and a little bit on that and doodling a little bit here and there.

My hope is that this blog will allow me an outlet for my desire to work in patches of this and that, so that I can focus on one big project at a time.  What worries me about the serial, Mirror Soul is that it really is a big project - even though I'm attacking it in pieces (posting 2-4,000 words a week). I find myself thinking and working on this "small project," rather than the novel (which is supposed to be finished in less than 20 days).

I don't think working in patchwork is necessarily a bad thing, so long as you keep your focus.  So I guess that's what I'm going to try and do.