I can compartmentalize and prioritize to make sure my clients get exactly what they contracted me for and perhaps just a little more.
The stories, on the other hand, have surprised me. I started some stories, finished a few, and started filling out a repository for the collection. While auditing what I have so far, I've discovered that the stories skew towards men as perpetrators, when I intended the stories to be more inclusive.
It does not point to men being the only creatures who commit adultery, it just seems as if those stories were easier to write. (Especially because I may have been familiar with one or two of the plotlines exposed.)
There is a danger of overexposing yourself when you commit memories your fiction, to come off a lot more naked than you ever intended, but the truth is that you are even in the more fantastical details of steampunk. Just as well, you want to protect the people whose tragedies you may be relating. The ones in the stories that are auto- or semi-biographical are all dead or unlikely to ever realize it's all about them. Mostly, what I want, is for these to get lost in the collection and appear as fictional but realistic pieces of the life inside the world in the pages of the book.
It does not point to men being the only creatures who commit adultery, it just seems as if those stories were easier to write. (Especially because I may have been familiar with one or two of the plotlines exposed.)
If I am to keep to my self-imposed production schedule, I need to make an editorial decision. I can keep the stories I have and make it a specialized volume -- A Guide to Post-Modern Lotharios -- and extend it to a two-volume project with the promise of more to come. Alternatively, I can try to finish and polish two or three stories that will achieve the original goal and keep it to a one volume.
Then it occurred to me that there really is no reason I need to limit myself. I can try to polish some of the stories I have not finished yet, but if they remain too rough for publication, I can release them later in another anthology (like a three-novella book, for instance).
It also occurred to me that I could try something different and include profiles, as I started for the FB page, almost as interstitials.
Of course, I need to finish something and release it! There is plenty of work to be done.
The house is starting to smell like a tiny bakery, with the Halloween cookie production already in motion. If that doesn’t awaken the Muse of Setting Fires Under One’s Ass, I don’t know what will!
But before I can fully tackle my adulterers, I have book covers to manipulate and convert, manuscripts to format, and proofreading to perform…
Right now, life is both a sprint and a marathon. Multitasking should be an Olympic sport!
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