WHAT TO WRITE...

Today I have the rare opportunity to spend the day writing. It doesn't happen very often but invariably when it does I am either not in the right frame of mind to write or I am feeling overwhelmed at the prospect. Today is one of those overwhelming days. I want to get some writing in but there is so much that I want to do that I'm not sure where to start, hence I am putting things off and writing this blog.
You see I am working on a few things at the moment and consequently my mind is like a computer with lot of tabs open, most of which are frozen. I want to work on everything, I want to get as much done as possible - but where to start? I have a few options. I could spend today continuing to plug/publicize my book The Sum of all Parts, try and get a bookshop on board for a signing maybe, rustle up another radio interview, record another excerpt of the book for social media (I've done two so far, head over to my Instagram @sara_sheeran if you're interested). Perhaps though I should focus on my latest offering The Leaves Are Dancing. This book is only recently out in the big, bad publishing world. I've had three offers so far, but they have been hybrid offers - which means I have to put up some of the money to get the book published. I'm reluctant to accept this type of offer, it feels a bit of a swindle, so with that in mind I probably should be continuing to send the book to agents or maybe I should be researching the self-publishing route.
Option three is my work in progress, working title Snow in Summer. I'm enjoying this first draft stage of the book, it's exciting seeing where my mind and pen take the characters. But it's also a prequel to The Leaves Are Dancing and as that isn't published yet....
Which leaves me with my final option. In the spring of this year I had a brilliant - well, in my opinion anyway - idea for a story. I shan't go into detail but it's a mix of historical fact and my imagination. I've already started the research, and it's far more enjoyable than the research I've done for prior books. That research meant my search history was mainly extremely dodgy, disturbing and sad - think suicide, dementia, drug abuse. It wasn't all negative though, the research also included handfasting ceremonies, Irish myth and folklore, the positive effects of therapy. The Sum of all Parts and The Leaves Are Dancing also explored love and relationships, family bonds, spirituality - they aren't all doom and gloom! But anyhow, for my new idea I'm having great fun, beside me on my desk is a folder already full of research, neatly categorised in different exercise books. I'm exploring the role of women in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the routes of The Grand Tour, architecture, newspaper archives, court proceedings from 1889, the Independent Church and English Dissenters. I've even got an interview lined up for next week with a minister in Devon with an aim to shed some light on the religious and charitable work of two of my proposed heroines. Maybe I should be working on what I want to ask him? Or perhaps some more background reading is in order - Graham Robb's The Discovery of France has a few chapters I'm itching to peruse.
Decisions, decisions. How I hate them but I suppose as I have left my main character in Snow in Summer unconscious in a road traffic accident I really ought to go and rescue him, he does after all need to make it to the end of the book.

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