Right now I'm working on four articles, a couple of queries, one rewrite of an earlier article (update: make that two rewrites), and a personal essay. I'm a pro at multi-tasking, so that should be easy for me to juggle, right?
WRONG!
What I failed to factor in when I took on all these projects is that each source that you add to mix complicates things exponentially. The essay is no problem, since that's the type of thing I can write whenever the mood (or the muse) strikes me, without waiting for someone across the country to return my calls or confirm the spelling of their name.
But three of four of my articles require a minimum of four sources, which means that I have well over a dozen people calling, emailing, texting, and otherwise begging me to include them in the article (or in some cases, I'm begging them to please call me back so I can include the West Coast multi-ethnic male grad student perspective in the article and still make my deadline). One of the articles is due on Thursday, so it's nearly done, and hopefully then things will return to some semblance of normalcy. Note to self: think about how many sources, not how many stories, you can handle before committing next time!