I’ve been playing with my “backburner” book for the past month or so. That’s a book I’ve been working on for ages that I’m still not happy with that I take out and work on when I don’t have another project going. It was a good project for while I’m getting settled and haven’t had full brainpower, especially since I didn’t have anything else ready to work on.

But this week I finally figured out a plot for Rydding Village book 4. I knew what the internal/relationship plot would be and even knew something about who the main characters would be, but I didn’t have a plot. That came to me, and now the book is coming together in my head. I’ve figured out some plot twists and backstories. So, since I need to get another book out, I’ll be getting to work on that. I’m planning to spend next week on plotting and outlining, and then start writing after the holiday weekend.

This weekend will be devoted to getting my house in order. I need to organize the basement so I can get some of the long-term storage stuff out of my office. I finally got the room-darkening drapes hung over the sliding glass doors in my den this week. They help block the afternoon sun to keep the house cool, and they block enough light that I can watch TV in the evenings without glare when it doesn’t get fully dark until after 9 p.m. I just have one more set of curtains to put up and then some general sorting and tidying, and then my house shouldn’t look like I just moved. I haven’t yet started hanging pictures, but I have to decide what I want to put up and where. Then I’m hoping I can settle down and focus on work and I’ll be starting the quarter in a new “normal.”

As for that other book, I need to think about it. I’ve found that I always tend to put it aside at about the same point in the story, which may be a sign that there’s something wrong there. It becomes less fun then. That is when things become more intense, which is supposed to happen at that point in the book, and maybe I’m just not up for that kind of intensity right now. Or maybe the last third of the book is wrong and that’s what I need to fix. I need to ponder that, but it’s something that can be a secondary project while the new book becomes the primary project.

Incidentally, though I often use the term “backburner” about projects, it’s never been something I’ve had literal experience with. But the stove in this house actually does have a back burner. There’s a burner that only offers very low temperatures, used for either things that require gentle heat, like melting butter, or keeping things warm. I can move a pan to that burner at the back of the stove to keep it warm while I work on something else, the same way I move a project to a lower priority while I focus on something else, but I keep it “warm” by thinking about it.