Worms, a can of, opened by @jennyrae !

Okay, so first, I have partially completed things of all lengths and genres at all times, I would never work any other way, it is the best way for me. https://twitter.com/jennyrae/status/1286324492436942848

My late friend Mike Ford described abandoned works as the nurse logs of the forest ecosystem that is the creative mind: they have fallen, but they nourish the healthy plants. Yes. THAT.

But also sometimes things need to percolate more than a minute. Sometimes years.

Also, unless you are a very, very slow writer, publishing WILL ask you to work on multiple things at once, one way or another.

I literally never know when an editor will say, "I like this but can we do some revisions." And then that thing is back on my calendar.

But also, for me, different lengths, genres, categories, stages, and types of work fulfill different creative needs. Today I will put new word count on an essay and a novel. Earlier this week I revised a short story and wrote a new poem. All scratching different itches.

How do I decide what to write next: a lot of times a project has a tendency to make itself internally urgent. The novel I'm writing right now has been a back-burner idea for 5 years and NOW IT IS HERE HELLO I AM YOUR CURRENT PROJECT WAKE UP AT 3 A.M. THINKING ABOUT ME HI

But also--as above with juggling multiple projects--sometimes other people's interest is the fresh rain that that particular seedling (or sapling or redwood) needs. External urgency matters too.

And also.

Sometimes I consciously decide that the world needs more of a certain kind of thing. The essay I'm writing is an essay that I feel will be good to have in the world. I wish someone else had already done it, but here we are.

Or, like, the Decameron Project story I did with the goats, Loosestrife. That was a combination of "hee, genetically engineered goats!" and "friend has asked about contribution to project" and "intellectual belief that people need upbeat, fun SF right now."

I spent the first probably 10-20 years of my life training my brain that coming up with stuff to write is what we do, and it listened, and now it's largely a matter of trying to run fast enough that the giant rolling boulder doesn't smoosh me.

I guess I want to pull this thread out: FOR ME, the right kind of editorial interest is creatively nourishing. It enhances my interest in a project by casting light on it from a new angle.

Does that mean I won't have other shiny ideas in the time when I'm working on it? Oh Surely You Jest, it means the opposite of that because the brain is more likely to be Very Creatively Busy and that's never just on one front.

But I feel like there's a sort of set of myths among inexperienced writers that editorial attention is simultaneously the Holy Grail and the Spanish Inquisition, and...no? Editors are not fairies granting your dreams, and they're not torturers ruining your creative work.

In the right kind of editorial relationship, editors are creative collaborators, not just business collaborators. They highlight different things about a project. This can be energizing, and I don't really see that talked about enough.