Crop Rotation in 2024

tyunglebower ♦ January 24, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

Though it be a bit late in the month for New Year’s sentiments, this is nonetheless my first post of the New Year.

Plans flucuate through the course of a year, but I can say with certainly that there will be no new novel this year. After a long, intense time spent with The Rubble and the Shakespeare, I will be dedicated this writing year to smaller (in comparison) writing projects. Smaller that is in the sense of fewer words per project than a novel.

There will be a short story collection coming later in the year, for example. More details on that coming later on as I get more underway with it. And perhaps some poetry. Not to mention other things here on the site that have no home anywhere else.

This is a bit of a change for me, as before covid I tended to write one novel per year. While I do not anticipate, and indeed do not wish for along a process for my next novel as my current one, I no longer feel one novel per year is my style going forward.

I think of it as crop rotation. The notion in agriculture that planting the same thing in a field year after year will ruin the soil and yield diminishing returns. But to plant something different each year for a while allow different nutrients in the ground to replenish, thus producing a healthier, more bountiful crop.

So I hope for my writing. Shorter, less intense works this year following a whole novel experience of the last several.

I offer this advice, humbly, to all creative types that may read this. You have a passion and you have a speciality, to be sure. But perhaps it will flourish to a greater degree if you spend a little time (or a lot of time) on a different creative act before embarking on your next project in your “speciality.”

May both my creative fields, and yours, be fertile in 2024.