Tuesday, October 26, 2010

New Projects

New Projects
Turning the Pages Series
Net's Notations Tuesdays

Another way God turns the pages in our writing lives is by giving us new projects. What if you’re a published writer who found your niche writing chick lit a few years ago? Now, the market has dried up, and you’ve had to find a new project—a new genre.

Recently the trend has been toward historicals—they’re what publishers want. But what if you don’t write historicals? Dawn’s wise position on this is sooner or later it has to come back around—editors will want contemporaries. All those of you who write contemporary fiction, can I hear an amen?! :D

Sometimes, timing clicks and writers get to begin a new project. Maybe God’s been leading us in a certain direction, and we’re finally at a point we can move there—try something new. Like screenwriting or YA. Maybe what we’ve always wanted to write is now possible—like spec fiction.

The opening of new doors can make things possible which weren’t before. Sometimes the open door coincides with a project we’ve always wanted to do.

Or sometimes working on a new project will help us practice our writing craft as well as give us time and space from the last project. That way we’ll be more effective when we return to that first project for editing, rewriting or just plain old evaluating.

And sometimes a new contract determines a new project with its own set of deadlines.

What page are you on? Where does God have you? The key is to write what God gives you and trust Him with the timing, both for that project and the next. The Author of our faith is simply keeping things interesting as He turns the pages of our writing lives.