7 Tips for Balancing Multiple Writing Projects with Marissa Meyer

In this bonus craft episode, Marissa shares her seven best tips and strategies for balancing multiple writing projects. Discussed in this practical episode: how many projects she works on at any given time and what stage in the process they are at, how she prioritizes, what she does in the times when she isn’t or can’t be drafting, and so much more! 

 Extra bonus: This episode also includes upcoming book announcements that you may have missed!

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Transcript

[00:10] Marissa: Hello and welcome to the happy writer. This is a podcast that aims to bring readers more books to enjoy and to help authors find more joy in their writing. I am your host, Marissa Meyer. Thank you so much for joining me. I am back, obviously, from an incredible trip to Europe, during which I had the absolute, immense pleasure of jaunting around Paris and champagne, France, with 30 of my new best friends. This was my very first Trova trip in which 30 readers got to join me. And, yeah, we went to Paris, and it was awesome. And they were such an incredible group of readers and writers and moms, and we had just anhe absolute wonderful time. And I'm excited to do it again now. So I am going to be doing another Trova trip next July, July 2025. And this time, we are going to the land that inspired, gilded, and cursed, and gave birth to the Brothers Grimm. We are heading to Germany and Austria, and there's gonna be castles. I'm so excited for castles. As of this recording, there are still four spots available, so if you're interested, we will have the link for all the details in our show notes, and maybe I will see you in Europe next year. 

The thing making me happy this week is that moment when you figure out a why a book isn't working. We all know this moment, right? Aspiring writers. Writers we know. So I have been working on a bluebeard retelling my next fairy tale retelling. It's gonna be coming out fall of next year, and I've been working on it since, like, I don't know, last September or October, thereabouts. And it is one of those books. It started out great. The first 15, 20,000 words were so easy, they practically wrote themselves. Great feeling. And then the book kind of just came to this screeching halt. And for months, I have been trying to push through my outline, an outline that I felt was pretty solid. But things just have nothing been jiving. And it's really kind of been like two steps forward, one step back throughout this whole draft. Well, yesterday, I finally think that I figured out the problem, and it was that moment of realization, that light bulb, and suddenly everything starts clicking together. And it is the best feeling. It's one of my favorite moments and experiences as a writer. And I'm so happy that I finally feel like I have solved this mystery. And now I can get down into fixing the book and making it better. And I'm glad that it happened now when I'm about halfway through the draft rather than when I finished the draft, and I'm hoping that this is gonna save me from having to do a complete rewrite later. 

So, speaking of outlining and drafting and rewriting, today's episode is going to be focused on a topic that we have received a lot of requests for. Today. We are going to be talking all about balancing multiple writing projects. I say we. I mean, I I'm flying solo today. No guest, no co host. That's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna talk about, yeah. How do you balance and manage having a lot of things in the works and what tips and tricks I have learned over the years. And hopefully I will have some advice that you will find helpful and help us all write all the things that we are inspired and excited by. And I if you're under deadline or multiple deadlines, I hope that some of the advice and suggestions will help you tackle those with grace and without too much stress. It's always the question mark. So I will admit that when I first sat down to start planning out what I wanted to say in today's episode, my first thought was, how do I balance multiple writing projects? Am I doing it well, or do I honestly just, like, create a lot of unnecessary stress for myself? Because I always have a million plates that I am trying to juggle, or balls. I'm trying to juggle plates to keep spinning. You know the analogy I'm looking for? Full disclosure. There are absolutely times when I feel like I am completely on top of things and life is running smoothly and writing is going well, and I'm hitting my deadlines and I'm making good progress, etcetera. But there are also times when I feel like I am being pulled in too many directions. My creativity is getting stretched thin. I'll start to feel those, like, little warning signs that we get when we're feeling like creative burnout is sneaking up on us. It happens. So, you know, I. For me, it comes with when I start to feel these signs of there's too much going on. I don't know if I'm handling it well. I'm really overwhelmed. One of the big signs for me is suddenly I have this inability to make decisions on even the smallest of things. It happens. So I wanted to point that out, that it's not like even though I have lots of projects going on all the time and I'm really excited about them. And I definitely have found some strategies that usually work for keeping things balanced and moving along, it doesn't work all the time. And I think it's important to listen to ourselves and to listen to our instincts and know when you need to step back and simplify and take a break. Take some time for yourself. On that note, we are planning an episode about burnout that's gonna be coming out in the near future. I don't actually have the date here, but soon, the next few weeks, I think, and we're gonna delve more into burnout and what you can do to prevent it. But I just wanted to start this episode with, you know, just that. Word of advice, listen to yourself. 

Just because you can have ten writing projects going at any given time does not necessarily mean that you should. And in fact, neuroscientists are, like, very clear on this. Our brains can only really focus on one thing at a time, and we can waste a ton of time and energy when we are just constantly trying to switch between multiple tasks all the time. So, of course, I am going to break down the amount of projects that I have and kind of what I've found to be my sweets, in a way, and why it seems to work for me and how I make it work. But everyone's going to be different. We all have different needs. We all have different creative processes. And so listen to your intuition and experiment and try new things and ultimately try to figure out what works best for you. And in the end, if that is only having one project from start to finish, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with you. But if you are like me, where you sometimes get bored or you get antsy, or you just have a lot of ideas swirling through your head all the time, and it seems more stressful to ignore them than to make progress on them, then I hope some of these tips will help. Okay, so how many projects do I have going on at any given time? We'll just kind of lay that out as a baseline. For the first ten years of my career, I would have answered pretty consistently that I had four projects going at any given time. I've almost always had one book that I was editing and or promoting, one book I was drafting, one book I was researching and outlining, plus a fourth bonus secret project. And that project could be at any point in the writing process, but it was generally one that my publisher didn't know about, something that was just kind of on the side just for me. And so it was never really under deadline. My bonus secret projects often take longer to write than the books I'm under contract for, because, of course, they're not, like, my top priority at any given time, but they're one of the things that I like to use to kind of stretch my creative muscles. And usually they do end up getting published, which is really fun. It's a fun thing to be able to surprise my agent, my editor, with. With that four projects at a time model. I pretty consistently wrote and published about three books every two years, and that felt pretty comfortable. But then here a few years ago, something happened. I suspect this was triggered for me by Covid, because that seems to. Seems to be when things just kind of started taking off for me creatively, suddenly I had, like, tons of ideas that I couldn't resist. My productivity really started to take off. And, I mean, we could try to psychoanalyze why that happened, because it was not the case for every writer and for every creative. But for me, in that period of time, I just felt this intense need to write a lot. And so I did, and I felt very compelled to just bring more and more projects into the rotation. So today, and that hasn't really slowed down. So as of this recording, I now have three books in editing and promotion. So that would be, let it glow. Coming out this October, the happy writer out in January. And then I have a graphic novel that has not officially been announced, but I hope we're gonna announce it at any time now. And that is coming out next June. I have two books in revisions. Neither has been announced. Can't really talk about them, but I am excited to one of these days. I have one book that is in the first draft, that is the aforementioned Bluebeard retelling. And I have two books that I am actively researching and outline. One of those is the sequel to the Renegades trilogy. I know everyone wants more info on that. It's still early, but it's in process. And then another is something that I probably shouldn't talk about yet. So two books, researching and outlining. Lastly, I have three additional projects that are either under contract or about to go under contract, and I'm going to have to start outlining those, probably by the end of this year. But since I'm not actively working on them right now, we could pretend like those don't exist. So if we ignore those last three, that makes eight projects that I am currently actively working on in some way or another. All right, that's where I am. The question then, of course, is how do I balance that? And in preparing for today's episode, I gave it a lot of thought, and I've come up with seven strategies that I use to manage my time and to try to manage my creativity. 

Number one, staggering deadlines and writing phases as much as possible. So if you have many books under contract and you are writing for multiple publishers, or maybe you write in a variety of genres, maybe you're both traditionally published and self published. This can be difficult. It is not always up to us when a book is due or when a book is being published. But whenever possible, I try to stagger the work so that I'm not trying to draft or revise or edit everything all at once. So for me, writing a first draft is the most labor intensive part of the writing process. Revisions come in a really close second. So generally speaking, if I'm, I shouldn't say if I'm, I'm always drafting something or revising something, but generally I'm only either drafting or revising one book at a time. I have tried to draft and revise multiple projects at a time. It has not gone well. So even though I have eight things in the works, I'm only ever drafting or revising one thing. Maybe, maybe two things if it's absolutely unavoidable. But even then, I would generally prefer to try to shorten the writing period for one project and then switch over to the other rather than try to do them both simultaneously. So for me, on the other end of the spectrum, we have things like researching, outlining, brainstorming, character development, world building. These tend to be less mentally draining, and I can kind of work on them in short bursts of time. I don't need hours of focused writing time to make progress on those elements of the writing process, so I can kind of easily switch in between them. Same thing with things like edits or promoting a book. I can hop in and out of copy edits, hop in and out of page proofs without needing like a huge mental transition period. I can create and schedule Instagram posts. You know, what does that take? Ten minutes? I can brainstorm some swag in a few minutes. I can plan a giveaway. So it's much easier to fit those tasks in around the bigger, kind of more all consuming tasks of writing and revising. So number one, stagger your writing phases as much as possible to try to keep different projects on different schedules. 

Number two, set deadlines and then break those deadlines up into a whole bunch of mini deadlines. So this is kind of goal setting 101, but it's one of those things. It can be easy to forget the basics, so it's worth repeating. It's worth remembering what tools can be really effective, even if they seem so obvious. And for me, setting mini deadlines is one of those things. So when you add a new project to your rotation, to your list of ongoing projects, um, one of the first that I do is I set a deadline for it. Sometimes this is a deadline that's given to me by my publisher, but sometimes it's very self driven. If it's not something that I'm under contract yet, honestly, if something doesn't have a deadline, it's difficult to take seriously. We've all experienced this, right? Even if you want to do something, if there's no ticking clock, it can be really hard to motivate ourselves to do it. Maybe not for you, but certainly for me. I love knowing what it is that I'm working toward at any given point. So if I don't have a date in mind, then that thing kind of just seems to linger on the back burner, and before I know it, oops. Now, maybe I do have it under contract, and it's due, like, next week, and that's no fun. So I always plan ahead by knowing when things are due or if I don't have an official deadline, I set one for myself so that I can kind of just try to, you know, hone my focus for it. After I have a deadline in mind, I work backwards. So let's say that you want to have a book written and revised and edited and ready to submit to agents next spring. So you might say, okay, I want to be submitting this on April 1, and then you would work backwards by March 1, I want to be starting in on my final edits, which means by January 1, I want to be working through revisions, and I want to have my first. If I'm working through revisions in January, then maybe I want to have my first draft completed early December. So I have a few weeks to kind of take off and let it simmer for a while. If I want to be done early December, then I need to start writing by August 1, depending on your writing speed. And my goal is going to be to write, whatever, 500 words a day and give yourself a little bit of buffer figure. Things don't always go according to plan. You might take some vacations you might get. You might have a family emergency to deal with. Things happen. Writing doesn't always go smoothly. You know, you sometimes have to go back and figure out why a book isn't working after eight months of working on it. So give yourself more time than you think you will need. But nevertheless, like, start by breaking it down into steps and setting a deadline for each step and then kind of figure out what are you going to need to do to hit those goals? Do you need to set word count goals, chapter goals? What is your concrete plan for getting it done? So I do that for every project, figure out when I want it completed by and when I need to start drafting. And that kind of lets me know how much time I have for planning and outlining. And then this also plays into what we talked about earlier, about staggering the different writing phases. So it kind of gives me this bird's eye view at what I have in the pipeline and early warnings so that I can see like, oh no, it looks like I'm going to be drafting these two books at the same time. Then I can kind of take early steps to adjust some of those schedules, maybe push back a deadline or start working on something sooner than I originally thought that I would have to, or maybe increase my word count goals to kind of shorten the drafting process, like whatever the right solution might be.

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[21:03] Marissa: That brings us to number three: pick one project to be your primary focus at any given time. Yes, this is an episode about balancing multiple things, but I always have just one thing that is my top priority. My this is the book that I am focused on the most right now. So for choosing that project, it might be whatever book has the nearest deadline. It could be whatever is currently under contract. For me, my top focus project is almost always the book that I am drafting or revising, because that is the most time consuming part of the process and the part of the process that tends to require the most effort, the most focus. And it means that I can't just hop in and out of a book that I'm drafting. I have tried. It is really hard, and it makes the drafting process feel so disjointed. It makes it really difficult to kind of maintain consistency when it comes to things like character motivation or your protagonist's major character arc and hitting those, those plot points and then tracking how, what has happened to the protagonist, how is it affecting them emotionally? And all of this. If you aren't in the project making progress on it at least weekly, if not daily or semi daily, then it kind of starts to feel like every time you work on it, you have to get reacquainted. You have to figure out, wait, where was I again? What happened in the last chapter? What is my character thinking, feeling, planning to do next? It gets really frustrating and it slows you down. It's not efficient, and I don't like things that are not efficient. I am all about efficiency. So for that reason, I always know what is my primary project, and that is the thing that I'm focusing on. And then I kind of work in the other projects as I can fit them around it. 

Number four, whatever your primary project is, try to be as consistent working on it as possible. So don't spend two weeks working on this thing and then two weeks working on this thing, and then two weeks working on that thing or whatever. You know, whatever your main focus is, be consistent. And consistency can mean different things for different people. For me, it means that I try to do a little bit of work on it every day. Not every day, most days. Five, six days a week. For you, it might be that you have a weekend writing sprint or like, whatever, whatever it means to you, but aim to keep this project front and center and always be moving it forward. So I usually give myself a word count goal. Maybe that's write 500 words a day or write 1000 words a day or whatever it is. Because again, usually my main focus is drafting and revising. But sometimes making progress on that main thing, it might mean spending an hour adjusting the outline or planning the next couple of scenes or doing character work. Like, as long as I am doing something to keep moving that project forward, on most days, it's enough to keep my head in the game. So an example is Bluebeard, again, my current primary focus. And like I mentioned, I have been drafting it for a while, but it's been giving me a lot of trouble. So I keep having these stops and starts in the drafting process. And this last week, I made the intentional decision, okay, I'm going to stop drafting. I'm going to stop giving myself a word count goal until I figured this out. And instead. Instead, I've spent the last week doing a deep dive into characterization and motives and kind of poking at the protagonist's strengths and flaws and how they relate to the larger story issues and all these things, and kind of reworking a lot of the nitty gritty of the story from the ground up. I don't have to throw everything away. Luckily, I have. I have had to do that before. I don't think I have to with this one, but it has been enough to figure out where I've gone wrong. What subplots need to be changed. A relatively big thing to do with the villain is going to be reworked. So even though it can be really hard to stop in the middle of the project and, like, stop trying to write, you know, words every day, new words every day. I know with 100% certainty that doing it now is going to save me a lot of time later when it comes to revision. So even though I have not been actively writing words, I am still consistently making progress on this book almost every day. 

Number five: when obligations for your other writing projects crop up as they do, tackle them immediately. So let's say that you are writing along. You're hitting your daily word count goal, whatever that is, and then copy edits arrive for a different book or page proofs, or you get an editorial letter, and now you have to go back and do revisions on this other project, or whatever it is. You have to go on book tour for something. It can be hard and frustrating. You know, there's always that part of us that feels like once we've submitted it and turned it over to our editor or whoever, like, we just want to be done. We're ready to move on to the next thing. And it's hard to stop and move away from the thing we're currently focused on to then do these other obligations. But it is a part of the process. It is a part of having a writing career. And when these obligations come up and they're kind of on the periphery of our to do list or of our brain, our thoughts, then our brains will constantly remind us. They turn into, like, these little nags. You need to do this. Don't forget, those copy edits are waiting in your inbox. Don't forget, your editor's expecting your response to the notes this week, like, you should be doing this, don't forget, it's a huge distraction. It's really annoying. It drains a lot of mental energy. So I do. I try not to stop work on my primary project entirely, but I will scale it way back. So if I've been writing, you know, 1000 words a day, maybe I'm now going to scale that back and only try to write 250 words a day, which is about a page. Or maybe I'll pause drafting entirely and then instead, you know, a half hour every day going back through the book, filling in research that I skipped over, or adjusting my outline, or pre writing some upcoming scenes, like whatever. Still trying to keep my head in that story, still trying to make consistent progress on it. But once I have done that, my daily task on the primary goal, primary project, then I turn my focus to whatever this thing is that has popped up into my attention for this other project. And I throw all of my time and energy into getting it done as quickly as possible, as quickly and efficiently as possible, so that it doesn't just fester in the background or worse. I never want to be the one that's holding up the show when it comes to the publishing gears grinding in the background. I don't want proofreaders or copy editors to be waiting on me. So I always try to tackle those things as soon as I can and get them off my desk, get them off my mind, and then, of course, go right back to focusing on the primary project. 

Number six. When it comes to balancing multiple projects, one of what I guess is, I don't know, is it a secret weapon, maybe? Certainly one of the things that I have always done. I always have the next project waiting in the wings. I am always, always, always planning a number of books ahead. I have books in my head right now that probably won't come out until 2030, 2029. Thereabout books that I am not actively working on, but lots of ideas, and I am able to kind of guide my career long term, knowing what's coming up at any given point. And then it becomes kind of like a little assembly line, which I guess makes the creative process sound like way more automated than it really is. But as soon as I turn one book over to my editor, I have the outline for the next book completed, ready to go, and I generally start drafting it right away. I might take a week off, relax, read some books like clean my house, whatever, but I'm pretty much always ready to jump right into the next thing. And I always know exactly what the next book is that I. And then once I've started on that next thing, I always know exactly what the next book is that I need to start researching and brainstorming and outlining. So there's always more coming up. There's always just like this little line of projects waiting for their turn to become the next primary focus. And honestly, usually by the point that I turn one thing in, I am dying to start on the next project. I think some people are like, why don't you ever take a break? Take a vacation? I don't want to. Usually these books have been just nagging at me for months, sometimes years, and it's like finally I get to write and focus on this thing. I really love that part of the process. I get so much energy and excitement from it. It's not until like 30,000 words in that then I'm like, okay, why is writing hard again? The added benefit to planning multiple projects and having them kind of in the pipeline is it also allows you to start gathering ideas really far in advance. So while I'm drafting Bluebeard, I'm also watching documentaries and reading articles, doing some preliminary research on the next project. Pretty soon, I'm gonna start reading through the Renegades trilogy as part of planning out the sequel for that series. So I can be doing that while still writing other things. I can be putting together Pinterest inspiration boards and finding inspiration photos for characters. I can be reading novels in that genre, getting inspired for that world or that type of story structure or that vibe, whatever it is I'm looking for. And then all of this really early idea gathering can take place for years, sometimes before I write even a single word on a project. But it's all, it goes into your brain, it goes into your subconscious, and it just kind of starts generating some of those early ideas. So that then when you are ready to start taking this one seriously and actively working on it, whether that's outlining or brainstorming or even just like jumping right into your first draft, however you do it, ideally, you will already have lots of ideas, lots of fodder to work with. 

Lastly, number seven. My final tip for balancing multiple writing projects is to keep a to do list, outlining the next steps for every project. Because sometimes it might be months between looking at or thinking about a given project. If it's not the one that you're primarily focused on. You might spend a week researching and daydreaming. You might get some ideas, and you jot down some ideas notes in your idea folder, and then you set it aside and months later you might come back and look at those notes and be like, what was I thinking here? I've forgotten everything. So to avoid that, and to avoid that process of having to get reacquainted with a project if it's been a little while since you worked on it, I keep lists for every project in the pipeline. What specific things do I need to research for this book? What characters do I still need to develop? What plot problems, plot holes? Issues still need to be worked out? I might keep a list of books that I want to read for research or documentaries that I want to watch. I'll have a list of characters or setting locations that need to be named. If I've started outlining, I will have notes to myself about have I plotted out the character arcs yet? Or maybe I need to flesh out this particular subplot or like, whatever it is, I will have a list for every project about what it is that still needs to be done or what needs to be done next. So the benefits to this are twofold, not only because it saves you time when you come back to that project and you can look at that list and immediately think, oh, yeah, that's what I was doing, and then you can just kind of slide right back into it. But one of the great benefits is that it also gives you tasks to work on when writing or revising or working on your primary project just isn't available to you. We have days where we are tired, where we are stressed or overwhelmed, or just like really busy. Or maybe it's like maybe your laptop battery died and you don't have the plug with you, or maybe you're traveling. Maybe you don't have your laptop at all. Like, there's a lot of reasons for this day or this hour, whatever reason, writing or drafting or revising, it's just not in the cards. But maybe you still want to make progress. You still want to work on something and kind of be making progress toward one of your writing goals. So then you can look back at your other projects, look to see what little easier things that need to be tackled, and you can pick one of those to work on. 

So you know me, you probably know what I'm going to say next. Maybe you don't. I don't know. But for the record, you really don't have to be productive every minute of every day. Some days the best thing we can do for our creativity is to not write, to not research, to not spend time in the story world or think about writing at all. Sometimes we should just take a nap or go see a movie for the pleasure of it or get a pedicure or hang out with our kids or something that's not writing related. And I worry that sometimes when we're talking about things like this, writing multiple projects, being productive, being efficient, and all of these things, it can seem like maybe I'm telling you to work hard all the time, never stop. Don't take your eye off the prize. I don't live my life like that. Or at least I try not to. And it can be difficult when you legitimately love what you do. My job brings me a ton of joy. I really. I think writing is fun. I love solving problems. I love outlining. I love preparing to write. I love when the scenes are going really well. I just love so much of it. And that because of that, it can kind of blur this line between work and play or work and hobby, work and home life. So sometimes I do feel like, I think other people look at me and like, oh, she works, works, works all the time. But it doesn't always feel like work to me. And so, anyway, I'm just saying this because I want you to recognize that it is always important to listen to ourselves, listen to our instincts. When you need a break, take a break. But if you don't want a break and you want to be working, you want to be productive. These are some things that you can do to kind of make progress on some of your various projects without always pushing yourself to just write more words. Write more words. Write more words. Okay, that's it. That's it. 

Those are my seven tips. I hope that was helpful. As I mentioned before, kind of very much related to all of this. We do have an episode coming up soon where we're going to be focusing on both productivity. Focusing on productivity without burnout. I am really excited about that. So hopefully these tips today kind of make for a nice appetizer for that topic as well. Of course, a lot of my tips and advice are going to be available in the happy writer book, which is coming out in January. So if you want even more of Marissa's writing advice, you can pre order that book today. We will have the link to that in our show notes. Okay. All right. Are you feeling inspired and motivated? I hope so. I kind of am. I feel like I'm ready to turn off this recording and go get some writing done, especially now, because I know what's wrong with my book. Yay. Next week, I will be chatting with Anna Sortino about her new ya, romance with disability rep. On the bright side, please don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. Check out our merchandise on Etsy, Instagram and teepublic and follow us on Instagram. Happywriterpodcast until next time, stay inspired, keep writing, and whatever life throws at you today, I hope that now you're feeling a little bit happier.