Multitasking Made Easy

It was a bit like herding cats, but we are finally back into the fiction writing we allegedly love. We were away from it long enough to convince ourselves we had forgotten how it works. Following the read-through of the existing 75,000 words, we procrastinated with discussions about modifying the ending (some of which were fruitful), and then we procrastinated some more with movies to “reward” ourselves for completing unrelated projects.

Several times we sat down to work and were stymied. Months ago when we stepped away from the project, we didn’t leave ourselves set up very well to step back in. Kent had a few cryptic sentences at the start of his scene. Jen simply had a document called “Deja Vu.” It was blank. The fear of the blank page got so bad that we even put off writing anything new in favor of backfilling a retaining wall with 4 tons of gravel.

In the end, we had to lock ourselves in the writing cave and stare at the flashing cursors on our monitors until we remembered how to make our fingers push all those tiny little buttons with the letters on them.

It felt good to produce something again, and we’re falling back into our old rhythms, which reminds us why it’s so nice to write with a partner. Jen is composing prose like a demon while Kent is busy learning all the important aspects of mouse breeding. If there were only one of us, progress would be slower. The writing would have to stop while the research into how temperature affects the genders of mouse fetuses was accomplished. With two of us, no such work stoppage is necessary. Kent can gather all the information he needs for future scenes while Jen works with the characters who are not elbow-deep in rodents. It’s a win-win.

In case you were wondering, colder = more female mice.