I am in the unfortunate position of working on two novels at the same time. I say unfortunate because this presents some risks.
The first risk is becoming a hack, meaning that I am writing two novels that have the same feeling… pace… plot twists, dialogue… characters, etc. This is similar to observations about Adam Sandler. You are never seeing him as a new character… but you are seeing Sandler in a new situation. If I write two novels at the same time, they have the risk of feeling very much the same. Because I am aware of this, I think the characters and the pacing are different… the voice is different. But who knows. It might be hackish… using the same typecast characters over, and over, and over again…
Another risk is that I get lost working on both, and finish neither one. Although I don’t think that will happen, it is possible that one of the books does not get finished. Because I am working on two books, I might lose some of the “steam” required to finish both… become bored with one… and abandon it to some abyss of lost fiction characters.
That is a sad place for fictional characters to go… a lost space of forgotten characters. I suppose that’s what the Twilight Zone is for.
Writing is still fun… the characters still intrigue me… their problems are still fun puzzles… and making their lives miserable is still a joy (for me). But how many books is too many to work on at one time? At what point will it become a dizzying mess of words?