CRAP! My weekend mistake.

I did something dreadful over the weekend.

I sat down and determined to work on my current book with ZERO interruptions. No. That wasn’t the dreadful thing, LOL. I turned off my e-mail software, closed out of twitter, and Xed out of my Internet browser. WOOHOO I was gonna get something done!

I then opened my WIP and put my fingers to the keyboard. But instead of my mind concentrating on the current book, it wandered far away to a partially written manuscript that was sitting somewhere, lonely, forgotten in the midst of the 250GB hard-drive. I could hear it’s famished pleas for attention, for someone just to read it one time and remember it.

Of course, the kindhearted author in me couldn’t ignore it. So I opened it. It is the third book of my Cyber-love series. I have the first book completed, the second book almost halfway finished, and the third book barely started, sitting at about 10k words. I’ve put book 2 and 3 aside until I garner interest for the first book, as I’ve had many advise me of this, and God keeps directing my attention elsewhere. But it’s been almost a year since I’ve even read the 10k words of book three. It was lonesome.

So I read. I saw MANY problems, fixed a small handful of them, ignored the rest for now. I smiled as the story unfolded, my mind not remembering much of what I’d written. My heart pulled a little at a heated scene between hero and future father-in-law. I leaned forward in anticipation of how it would end. The chapter ended with a slammed door and a fuming hero. I grinned in delight and scrolled down to the next chapter, eager to remember what happened next.

And that’s when I saw it.

A stark, blank, pure white screen with a blinking cursor.

CRAP!!!!! It was like those stupid books that end with the 1st chapter of the next book (the one not due out for another 6 months to a year) that end on a total hook and make you want to scream. Only this one was MY fault because I just haven’t written it yet. And really, I hadn’t decided what happened next either! CRAP CRAP CRAP!

But… then I toggled over (Alt-Tab is my friend!) to my current WIP. Hero, who is repentant, and heroine, who is thoroughly ticked off and not in the mood to forgive, are getting ready to sit down to a highly heated game of checkers while stranded at her house in a snow storm. (they aren’t alone… no worries, Dad just went to bed much too early, to Heroine’s chagrin)

I was so conflicted between the two stories that I got a whoppin’ 86 words written that day. NOT what I’d hoped for by any stretch.

To make matters worse, I was sitting in church and a little piece of the puzzle to book #3 hit me. I want to write it SO very badly, but I know in the scheme of things it’s a bad idea. Even if I went back to the series, I’d really need to finish book 2 before I start again on book 3.

To top ALL of this off, I still have much editing to do on the book I finished in November, and I have my Genesis entries to polish and write synopsis’s for. AND! I still haven’t done my taxes! Which is a total tragedy because I’m due back money (that’s what three kids and a hubby who only works part-time will do to you…)

So here I sit… Sunday night… having so much to work on but no clue what start first. In a perfect world, I’d split up my time. Um, you know how when you fold a piece of paper in half and eventually it is so small and thick you can’t half it anymore? Yeah, that is my time. There isn’t enough of it to split.

The answer for me is to prioritize. I know this in my heart. Do things that have deadlines first, the ones with sooner deadlines coming in priority.

1. Genesis entries. Due 03/31/10.
2. Taxes. Due 04/15/10.
3. Sandwich book edits. No due date, but I get in crits every few weeks from crit partners for the next chapter. Need to do better at setting aside (non-deadline stuff) and doing those edits as they are received.
4. Embarrassing book. No due date, but current WIP that I want to finish ASAP, definitely before baby’s arrival.
5. Book #2 of Cyberlove series.
6. Book #3 of Cyberlove series.

As you can see… my last priority is book #3. *sigh* So I must set aside my intense curiosity of what will happen and get back to my list of priorities.

Discussion: How do you decide what/when/how to work on things?