The importance of secret projects

I wasn’t supposed to do it. I’d been saying for days that I needed to work on “my book”—a.k.a. the novel that I have been revising/rewriting. I am always working on a book, so this isn’t exactly…well…novel. (Couldn’t resist.)

But this one has been challenging me. I am absolutely in the rut of taking it way too seriously. I want it to be GOOD. I want it to DO good. I want good things to come from it. And while I did work on it while I was in the UK, it’s been close to two months since I did any substantial edits.¹

Today, I jotted down a few notes and…worked on something else. A secret project.

In the writing world, there is a significant school of thought that frowns upon “cheating” on your manuscript.² In this school, secret projects like this are called plot bunnies. They must not be pursued.

“Don’t chase your plot bunnies!” writers will exhort each other.

Chasing a plot bunny! (this image, I am sort of embarrassed to say, was created on Canva using their AI thing. but it’s too amusing not to share. if you look closely, you can tell there is definitely something wrong with this person’s anatomy!)

This all stems from the—very legitimate—fear that if you chase plot bunnies instead of completing the project you’re currently working on, you will never get anything done. You will spend your writing life chasing bunnies and be left with a bunch of half-finished Scrivener documents to show for it.

I agree, to an extent. There are times when you absolutely have to force yourself to sit down and stay on target.

And yet…as (presumably) anyone who has ever worked on a book-length project can attest, these damn things take forever. Writing a book requires a lot of stamina. You’ve got to find the joy, the enthusiasm, the energy for a project over, and over, again. Or maybe you’re writing out of rage or sheer forward momentum—I don’t know. Either way, when that momentum is broken, it’s hard to pick things back up again.

I’ve been having a hard time finding my joy in my current project. So…I let myself find some joy in writing other things.

Last weekend, I did some writing prompts. Yes! Writing prompts! I never do those because I am afraid of plot bunnies (see above, and now if you are a Millennial or Millennial-adjacent I really hope you, like me, are picturing Bunnicula). But I did them. They were fun!

I picked some off of Reedsy and yes, I chose the “vampire” and “Halloween” categories. Obviously. Because I was finding my writing joy!

This weekend, once again staring down the long hill at my Serious Novel, I went veering off in a different direction and picked up a story I’ve been tinkering with off and on. This is my Secret Project, and it is making me very happy.

Will Secret Project see the light of day? Who knows! But it’s helping to get me in rhythm with writing again. It’s reminding me how I do this storytelling thing.

A few years ago, I picked up a book by Eve Rodsky that describes this as finding your “unicorn space.”³ Falling in love with a project—carving out time just for you to create it, even when the world is on fire—and letting it come into being. Then, in some way, sharing it with the world. Unicorn space is something any of us can find—you don’t need to be writing a novel or consider yourself “a creative” to work on something that lights you up from the inside out and makes your day better.

Will I finish my Secret Project now? I don’t know. But my joy is my sign that I’m heading down the best road for me, wherever it takes me.

What about you? Do you carve out time to work on secret projects? Let us know in the comments :)

1. This is a topic for another day, but yes! You read that right! I don’t write every day.

2. As if writing novels is the equivalent of a human relationship!

3. Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World, by Eve Rodsky