Distraction - Remedy or Curse?

Whilst still banging on the door with my first novel, Delve, I thought what better way to take my mind off the painfully long submission process than to start a new novel.  I knew it wouldn't stop me checking my email every half an hour, or ringing my husband from work to ask if anything had come in the post, but it would provide some form of distraction.

And so whilst I knew that Delve in my mind was the first novel in a series, what I couldn't predict was whether it would be successful or not. Not wanting to put all my eggs in one basket, I started out with a completely different kind of project. Not another young adult novel, but an adult horror with supernatural undertones. And not first person POV, but multiple person POVs.

Little did I know how much a challenge The Curse (working title) would prove to be. I had a slow start, and then tried to boost the wordcount in NaNoWriMo style but failed miserably.  After a serious amount of blood, sweat and tears, I think I ended up at a wordcount near 14,000 words. Some of it was just a regurgitation of a previous draft or notes; other parts of it were new and completely unstructured, and totally pants; but when I stripped it all back, there were parts that showed some real promise (or so I'd like to think).

I think part of the problem is that The Curse is technically more challenging than my first novel. I'm not only trying to tackle multiple POVs, but switching timeframes. Oh, and I've created a completely fictitious Island.

Feeling somewhat despondent about my new wip, I tried to breathe life into it by writing a few key scenes, which I could join together later in a kind of frenzied dot to dot. It worked for a while, until I found new distractions - like blogging (she says with guilt in her heart), and most recently a short story competition. Now I'll admit freely that I haven't tackled a short story in years, and it's bloody hard. If I have a muse in heaven, I think they are taking great pleasure in punishing me right now. I will finish the short story as I am not the type to give in easily, but when it is done, I will return to The Curse and after I have kicked and screamed, I will beg it's forgiveness for such folly.