Distractions

Lately, I've been good at staying on track with my work. The word count has increased each day. I'm on track to finishing this book at the end of the month. Learning more about marketing. My new planner is helping focus my days better than the phone calendar method I tried the last half of 2017.

But today, I'm finding myself distracted by my mind wandering to what's next rather than focusing on the present. My muse has a great idea for a series. Four books in total. I love the idea. Excited about it. But, I keep telling myself, I need to finish this book before I start another one. Especially one that is in a genre that is different from what I usually write, and comprises of four books. I've done romantic suspense, but not romance only. I'm confident I can pull it off, but it's not on the schedule. And for some reason my muse cannot deal with that and keeps pushing it into my mind. I have perfect scenes for the book. Wonderful dialogue. Intriguing plot points. All elements needed for a great book. Except, it doesn't do me any good for this book.

This is the first year I actually wrote out a schedule, not with dates, but projects I want to complete this year. Finish the book I'm writing now, another new full length mystery, revamping/editing a romantic suspense I wrote about five years ago, and two short stories. Ambitious for me. And now this new project has taken up residence in my head, and it's not on the schedule. There's a chance I can add it in depending how long the next two big projects take. Right now, I'm against changing the plan as every other time I've decided to work on a different idea than the original I had in mind, I got less done than more. So, I feel it's important this year to give scheduling projects a chance.

If only this new idea would let up a bit.