I’m trying something new, and it seems to be working!
With my OCD, I usually prefer to concentrate on one thing for an extended period of time. I need to finish one WIP before I begin another. This is part of why I love NaNoWriMo so much; getting an entire novel out in just one month!
However, when I stalled on 21st Century Airship Princess and put it on the shelf, I moved on to not just one, but two new stories. They use the same setting and theme as 21CAP, so I’m not switching genre or tone. One story will probably be novella length, and I’m typing it into the computer (as is the norm for most authors, myself included.) The other, which will probably be full novel-length, I’m writing into notebooks like I did with 21CAP.
Surprisingly, it seems to be working! Typing on the computer is fast, and I instantly know my wordcount, but I need to be home on my laptop (which is large and not easy to take places) in order to work on it. Handwriting is slower, but has the advantage that I only need my notebook and a pen. I can write sitting in the school parking lot waiting for my daughter to come out. It gets problematic when I forget how long ago some event in backstory happened or what name I gave a restaurant, but it lets me put long rambling notes to myself next to the text.
There are two deadlines coming up. Noon on November 1st is the deadline to enter the Zebulon, a local writing contest that mimics the process of querying an agent. November 2st is also the beginning of NaNoWriMo. That gives me about five weeks to finish up what I’m working on and prep for the new story.
Realistically, finishing a novel and a novella in five weeks is highly unlikely. I’m not sure whether I’ll just set them aside for November, or whether I’ll come up with some intriguing solution.
And who knows? I may surprise myself.
AmyBeth Inverness 
I like to finish one thing before starting another, but I also get bored with all my WIP while they’re in progress, LOL. I am trying to finish a book now. I spent most of the summer writing short stories, and I have more ideas, but first I have to finish the book, but I like my other ideas better….
Someone told me Isaac Asimov used to have twenty typewriters with different stories going on each one, and when he got bored with one story he’d turn to another typewriter and work on that one. I kind of want to try that, just have eight document files open and go between them as i get tired of one, move to the other.