‘Do You Plan Book Completions?’
Crackpot Mailbox: Adel Wants to Know if there is a Method to the Graphomadness
[Written in 9 December 2019]
“Mister LaFond, I am astonished, as a writer myself, that you have over 30 outstanding book projects. The idea of this alone threatens the writer’s notion of content control that is so much of the appeal to the heart. Please, if you would be so indulgent, explain to us normie writers how this works for you? Specifically, how do you plan book completions?”
-Adel
Adel, my base reason for writing is to stave off insanity.
Basically, I cannot forget storylines and certain key story scenes I have written, but do manage to forget about 75% of the actual content, such as dialogue.
With non-fiction, I can usually maintain access to facts I researched in my mind, but will forget most of the articles and passages, relieving my mind of quite a burden.
Eventually, failure to finish a book will begin to drive me mad. It took eight years to finish Seven Moons Deep, for instance. Unfortunately, once I clear my mental dock of fiction, other story ideas begin to emerge.
This process is a race against the mental health reaper.
I try to manage my writing on four tracks:
-Non-fiction, lineal journaling and social commentary, which tend to compel me to completion based on my logistics, taking into account page count [trying to wrap books up before 400 pages] and my other commitments. I am approaching this seasonally at this point, doing four such books a year and one book of impressions every two years.
-Biographies, totally dependent on subject input, with some done in a weekend and others over years. These do not weigh on my mind, not being creative.
-Histories, research-driven projects which are not stressful to hold in a pre-completed state until they get oversized and unwieldy
-Fiction, the haunting ghosts of my imagination and of expressed confabulation in regard to the nature of human beings.
Currently I intend the following completions, about half of whom will not be done by the time I would prefer:
-December 30: Sons of Aryas [history] did in late January
-January 1: As Darkness Falls [journalism] done but not formatted
-January: The Spiral Case [novel, 6 years]
Pushed back to March
-January: The Filthy Few [novel, 3 years]
Pushed back to whenever
-January: Beyond the Pale [novel, 3 years] competing now, in late February/early March
February: Nightsong of the Nords [novel]
Finished in January
I only did 2 of the above in the time hoped for and one ahead of schedule as the snowy hikes inspired it]
March: Neanderbol [novel with Tony Cox] pushing back to next year
The completion of Sons of Aryas generated 400 pages of ancient warfare material that could not fit in the book, which I will attempt to format and complete as Might, a book on ancient warfare methods sometime this spring, squabbling muses willing.
December 2020: American Spartacus, [900-1,000-page two-volume history]
December 2020: Night Manger [novelette with Erique Watson]
Adel, these are all the intended completions I can hold in my head right now. I can’t even tell you the rest of the titles other than the three series of history books:
The Broken Dance: 1 of 4 volumes left to go after 21 years
Plantation America: 3 of 12 volumes left to go after 5 years
A Dread Grace: 3 of 4 volumes left to go after 5 years
