The “Optimum” Number of Writing Projects

“How many writing projects do you work on at once?”

Often, when writers ask me this question they are also asking “How many projects should I work on at once?”  

It’s a tough question both because the answer depends on lots of factors—personality, neurotype, writing style, job, health, life circumstances, goals for the finished projects etc.—and because I still don’t know exactly how many projects I “should” work on at once. (Ambition is not an easy demon to ignore and sometimes it gets louder than inspiration.)

I am a writer who thrives on projects (by projects, I mean collections, essays, novellas, suites of poems, or any basically any writing endeavors longer a single poem or flash-fiction). I love a deep dive (see the years spent I spent writing about submarines). I love spotting entanglements, parallels, and connections. I love putting poems in conversation with one another. I love writing poems, then writing an essay, and then using what I learned writing the essay to pull the poems together.  

I find that my projects feed one another (much the way that having multiple houseplants lets them share moisture and increases the likelihood that I will remember to water all of them). I also find that shifting between projects at different stages helps me stay productive. I can start a new project only when I am well-rested and have an open stretch in my schedule, but I can often revise or rethink or just plain old putter at a well-established project later in the day.  

Sometimes the ending of one project actually facilitates the start of a next project. A few weeks ago, I worked with a friend to co-design the cover-art for my forthcoming chapbook, which is about a politically-divided neighborhood suddenly occupied by beings the residents call “angels”. We had a long meandering conversation about medieval art, Hallmark cards (not the look I was going for), birds of prey (are angels a kind of wildlife?), how a figure could be legibly androgynous, and visual “noise”. And then I found myself jotting initial notes for what I hope will be an essay on contemporary spinsterhood.  

All this to say, I thrive when I am able to work on more than one project at once. Up to a point.

Nothing shuts down my creative momentum quite like Project Overload. As Blake put it “you never know how what is enough unless you know what is more than enough”. There’s a point at which the mental load of managing too many projects and flipping between them overtakes the energy I have for writing. Decision paralysis kicks in (which project do I prioritize today? And now how can I waste my writing time second-guessing that decision and feeling guilty for not working on other projects?), my brain whirs like an overheated laptop with 20 tabs open, and the projects that once excited me all loom like impossible tasks. Then I have to practice the writerly skill of making Ruthless Decisions and backburner some projects so that I can finish others.  

My current guideline for myself is “more than one, no more than five”. I like to be able to count all my writing projects on the fingers of one hand. This generally lets me have projects at beginning, middle, and end stages, and it gives me just enough room to swing between poetry and prose. It leaves space and time in my life for the non-writing efforts—caretaking, home repairs, hobbies etc.—that fuel my writing. It reminds me to prioritize the work that really calls to me rather than the pieces I “should” write because they will be “good lines on my CV” or “build my brand” (or whatever nonsense that demon Ambition is spinning). And it gives me the incentive I need to let go of bittersweet lingering and move late-stage projects across the finish-line.  

As a poetry coach, I often help writers identify which projects they feel called to prioritize—and help them break those projects into approachable and achievable steps with meaningful goals. Please consider requesting a Zoom consultation with me if this sounds like something that would help you.    

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