Limbo and April

I find myself in kind of a weird place right now. The sekrit project still needs work–most of that marketing stuff we talked about last week, though the excerpt has gone out for approval and will go up at the beginning of the month–but there’s nothing I can actively do while I wait for my co-writer’s input on the book description and the cover.

So I’m in this sort of limbo. I feel like I can’t start up one of my other novel projects while the marketing stuff for the sekrit project is still outstanding, but I also feel like I should be doing something.

The best I can figure for the moment is that I’ll do some short stories. I have some written but not typed up, and other ones that need to be submitted. But, unfortunately, that’s probably only 2-3 hours of work, and then I’ll be stuck again, because it sounds like I’ll be getting nothing from my co-writer until Sunday (boo!).

I could…write a new short, I suppose? I’m delaying the release of my short story collection until the fall, even though it’s essentially done, because what’s the point of putting out two books within a month and then potentially nothing else for the rest of the year? (Although…now that I think about it, I think I’ve got an anthology coming out in the fall. Maybe release it late summer, then? Argh.)

I guess the next step would be to move on to my nonfiction books until the marketing for the sekrit project is done.

I mean, some of that will be ongoing, such as contacting potential reviewers or bloggers, but that’s not necessarily creative in any way.

For April I’d like to participate in Camp Nanowrimo. Camp is very hit or miss for me in terms of whether it’s useful or not, but I figure why not try? I’m behind on everything for the year, and it might help me get back on track. I’ve set a goal of 15K and will primarily be working on my scifi space adventure with dinosaurs (you may remember that from Nano 2014) which needs about 25K more on the first draft.

I’d like to work on my submission docs (query/synopsis) for my YA paranormal novel too, but I’m not sure it’s possible to be into two different books that closely, so that may be a terrible idea. Especially with ongoing sekrit project stuff happening.

I don’t know if I will be able to work on the scifi novel while also getting the sekrit project launched, but I suppose I can do 15K on my nonfic stuff instead. There’s certainly that much (probably closer to 25K, or more) to be done there as well.

Can you do submission stuff for one novel while writing and/or marketing another, squiders? Any tips on keeping everything straight?