Does anybody else have a hard time prioritizing? It’s something that seems difficult for me. Whenever I need to choose something to do, I look at my to-do list or goals, both of which mostly exist in my own head, where it’s safe.

Writing things like that down never seems to help that much for me. I don’t know why. It’s like in my head everything is nicely filed and you can only pull out one file at a time and while you work on that one item, everything else is put away so it can’t look at you and remind of the rest of the stuff you need to do.

But if you write down everything that you need to do, you can’t help but see it all at once. And once you see it all, you know perfectly well that given the amount of time you have, you cannot get it all done.

And that’s where it gets difficult for me.

Of course, the easy answer when you cannot do it all is to do nothing but play Stardew Valley. That way everyone wins. But I do try to be productive with my days.

Most often at odds with each other is housekeeping vs writing. Naturally, I’d rather write than clean the house or do laundry. But at some point, if you never clean the house or do laundry, life becomes unlivable. I mean, I would assume. Obviously, I know nothing about that firsthand…

But even once you’ve made the decision to clean or write, within that there’s a whole subset of tasks which would take far longer than I have to complete.

I’m starting to wonder whether it’s more valuable to continue querying agents with my zombie book or to go all in on finishing my Fiercest Chicken book. When I’m looking at agents, a lot of times it seems like they will like my Fiercest Chicken book more. It’s easier to understand, has tons of excellent comps, and cannot be dismissed out of hand by people who inexplicably hate zombies.

I suppose part of it might depend on what type of books I see myself writing long term. I’m still not sure if it makes more sense to specialize now or keep trying everything until I know for sure what sort of books I want to write.

I’m also still on the fence about participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I see other writers excitedly announcing their new projects. Do I want to be one of them? Or would I rather just try to finish what I’ve already started?

Sometimes, I think I end up spending more time trying to work out what the best thing to be working on is than actually working on anything. If anyone knows a solution to this, do tell me. It can only help.

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