I love notebooks. I love having all my thoughts and sketches and jottings about a project in one place, and the sense of focus that brings when I sit down and open one to work in it.

Focus has been a wonderful gift these last couple months. In June I was feeling bottlenecked: too many story ideas vied for my attention and I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to work on. Exactly what happened next is something I can’t quite remember. I suppose some synapses fired off and crashed into others. The next thing I know, I’ve decided that one of my projects would make a great novel to work on and shop around as my first serious effort at publication — and can also be connected to one of my other projects over here, and that this third project could also be a kind of sequel.

The ideas merged, not into a series exactly, but more like different aspects of a shared universe. At least I can’t find a better way to describe it without spoilers. And I’m playing this one close to the chest for now so don’t expect to hear what it’s all about.

The main novel, the hub around which everything else revolves, is being worked on in a blue notebook. Hence the “public” title of Project Bluebook (the actual working title is also something you shouldn’t expect to hear for awhile). There might be a joking reference to the US government program that studied UFOs, but I can tell you I’m not writing about little green men…I think.

It might sound like it would lead to the same problem: multiple projects, multiple notebooks, and the dissipation of energy. But in fact my enthusiasm hasn’t waned a bit since I started two months ago. I’ve been steadily writing, making notes, experimenting in these pages. Moving between stories and notebooks doesn’t seem like a weakness anymore, but a strength.

Focus has been a wonderful gift. So has diversity. In the space where they overlap, my creativity seems to be thriving.