I realized yesterday that I’m a complete and utter blockhead.  Yeah, I know you’re all shocked.  *rolls eyes*

I’ve referred to my totem animal the horse many times.  How sometimes I just want to kick the stall down and charge off into the hills, wild and free.  How hard it is for me to settle under the saddle sometimes, or to take my place in the harness.  It’s not the work I mind.  I love the work.

It’s the idea of constraint.

I’ve always had a super hard time categorizing myself.  Early on, I was told I was too category when writing contemporary romance so I gave it up a long time.  Yet my category efforts weren’t category enough.  My fantasy is often too fantasy for romance readers, yet I can’t call a book a romance when major characters die, even if the ending is super happy and positive.  My Jane Austen Space Opera series isn’t really SFR.  But it’s not really steampunk either, unless you widen up the accepted time period and allow nanobot technology instead of steam.

I finally realized yesterday where I get myself into trouble.  It starts at the very beginning, when I’m brainstorming an idea.  Here’s how the last few days have gone.

1. I want to develop a new paranormal romance series.
2. I don’t want to do vampires or werewolves because everyone does them.
3. I don’t want to do demons because I love Larissa Ione’s demons.
4. I don’t want to do witches or angels either.  Everyone’s done them already.
5. Hmmm.  Change gears.  What about the underlying mythology?
6. I don’t want to do Celtic.  Everybody’s done Celtic.
7. I don’t want to do Norse.  Egyptian.  Same reason.
8. I picked Maya because a). I love pyramids and b). blood sacrifice and c). not very common when I started the idea.  But I had several comments about the weird/unusual/hard to pronounce/understand names.  The blood stuff was “disturbing.”  Hmm.

Hmm.  So I went to Amazon and started looking through the bestseller lists to look for trends.  What’s popular right now?  What’s selling?  What kinds of titles are people using?

Right away, I noticed there were 15,000+ books listed generically under “Romance->Paranormal.”  Hmmm.  That’s a TON of books.  Then I noticed that there were only a few sub-sections of Paranormal listed, like Demons and Devils.  Not shapeshifters.  Interesting.

So then I went to the publisher’s store where I plan to submit this idea, and examined their tags under paranormal romance.  They were different tags than Amazon, but still very specific.

Now here where’s I’m a blockhead.

My gut reaction:  I can’t do something in those tags.  It won’t be different enough.

*headdesk*

Yes, that’s the horse kicking down the stall and running away for no apparent reason.

I asked myself.  Self?  Do you want to be 1 book in 15,000 paranormal romances?  Or do you want to be 1 book in 700+ Demons and Devils?  Or less than 300 psychics?

Wow.  Yeah.  I’m ashamed it took me so long to figure that out.  I’ve only been writing something like 9 years now…

In my efforts to always be unique and different, I make myself hard to categorize.  I don’t fit within boundaries very well because I DELIBERATELY choose to find something outside of the box.

That’s not a bad thing, if I control it.  I have to stand out in some way, but I need to narrow the field if I can.  It’s only smart.

I want to be smart.

So yes, write what I love.  Find the unique.  But also pick something that is easily categorized.  I don’t have to write vampires.  I don’t have to write werewolves.  But there are other things I do love that will keep the muse interested and excited.

While I’m writing Mama C’s first draft, I’ll be building a paranormal romance trilogy that fits squarely in my sweet spot.  It will have shapeshifters, masks, demons, and Native American mythology and I’m quite excited about what I have so far!

Returning from RT13 inspired, I spent the day planning my next projects and administrative tasks.  I’ve got 12 non-writing items on my to-do list.  Gulp.  Things like sending Her Grace’s Stable out for reviews, buying ads, gathering prizes, writing guest blog posts, etc.  It’s insane!

Then I sat down and made a list of all the projects I want and have to do work on.  There are only 8 on the list.  *laughs manically*

I made a list of what I need to do to get moving on Mama C again.  I re-read everything I’ve written so far, made some light edits, and jotted a few notes.  Then I worked on the story until I got 500 words.  It was pretty slow going — it’s been at least a week or two since I last opened the file.  But I did finally get the words I needed and the story was starting to flow better.

My plan was to get as much set up today as possible so I can return to D&E writing tomorrow.  I have a hard time dragging myself up out of bed that early, though, if I’m not already knee-deep in the story. e g. the characters need to be talking in my head without effort and I need to know exactly what comes next.  However, Mama C isn’t fully plotted yet.  I had a neat twist come to me that’s going to require some additional work.  I don’t have the middle-end of her story plotted at all–just a few scenes for the first Act.  That’s it.  I don’t want to write too far and then get stuck…

But I can’t sit around waiting to plot this book either.  I’m wasting too much time.

So what I’m going to try to do is work on my plot at night, at least far enough that I can get up the next morning and write the next scene.  Hopefully I’ll be able to keep ahead of myself.  Usually the ideas spawn other ideas, so as I write, I should get more and more future scenes falling into place.

I’m also going to come up with some kind of schedule to handle all the administrative tasks before my next release.  e.g. I need to write one guest post a week or something or I’ll lose my ever-loving mind again.

In addition, I’m building a new idea that I started developing this past week in KC.  I’m shuffling it a little higher on the list just below Mama C, with the goal of having it built and plotted so that as soon as I finish Mama, I can switch gears and immediately begin to draft the other project.  I need to get better at handling multiple projects in various stages of development at the same time, or I lose months as I try to get a new project moving.

I have a feeling Mama C’s going to run in the 70K range instead of the <50K range, so it’s probably going to take me into June before I can finish the draft.  We’ll see though.

That’s the plan and I’m sticking to it.  For now!