This new project I’ve been working on—writing letters to my unborn daughter in the style of an epistolary memoir—has, fortunately, fanned the embers of the dying fire that is my desire to write. Since starting this project, I’ve not only been devotedly working on these letters but have also recovered my interest in working on fiction—hurray!

But wait. Here’s where it starts to get tricky.

I’m still at least thirty-one flavors worth of excited about this letters to my daughter project—doing something so different like this is challenging and rewarding and exciting and . . . and . . .—but I also want to be working on a children’s book project, which I really, really, really want to finish (at least in draft form) by the time my baby is born. In addition, I’ve been starting to daydream again about that novel I was submerged in the second draft of a year ago when I got word my first book was being published, and I’ve been itching to get started on some new short stories on top of that.

And so this is about the point where I begin to feel overwhelmed.

When I was in my MFA program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, I attended a craft talk by HarperTeen author J. T. Dutton. During the Q & A after her lecture, someone asked Dutton what advice she has for people struggling with writer’s block. She said that she believes often all writer’s block is is having too many ideas and not being able to settle on one and just get it done. I thought that was absolutely brilliant.

I feel, right now, at risk for developing that sort of block if I’m not careful. For several months I was on again off again blocked in that more frustrating, I-don’t-have-anything-to-say way. This new nonfiction project has successfully jarred that block open, but now the ideas feel like they’re just flooding in, and I’m starting to feel at risk of drowning.

Which of these projects should I be working on? And if I make up my mind to divide my time between some specific projects, what if I just can’t get one of the others out of my head? I know if I try to spread myself too thin, the block will come on full force again, and I’m still too fragile, I’m afraid, to be able to handle another extended period of block. I need to avoid it now before it pulls me down.

So it’s a tricky path I’m treading right now, but I guess the good news is that I see the obstacle in my way and hopefully still have time to maneuver around it. I need, though, to put together a plan to keep the block at bay. I think the best thing to do right now is probably to limit myself to no more than two projects, but the difficult decision is which two? Obviously, I should keep working on my letters, since those are what opened up my block to begin with. But beyond that, what other project is the right project to keep me motivated and keep me writing?

Maybe I should be working on some new stories, since I currently only have two stories in circulation. The value of working on stories, too, is that I can complete a first draft of a single story in a few days. If, at that point, I realize that I really need to be working on something else, I can. Well, here goes.