I'm stuck. Le Grand Projet is stalled. Actually it's only become grand since it's been causing me problems (a week); it was just my third novel before that. It is quite big, however, hence the problems. My two previous novels have been in the first person, present tense, and with the story taking place over a few weeks. The third is in the third person, set over 30 years, with nine major characters (I'm going to ignore the Dante-esque number system I've just noticed).

More importantly, it requires responsibility towards recent historical fact, which in turn demands all psychological insight must be respectful, which in turn is taking me to a very dark place indeed. I underestimated the enterprise.

I have known there was a problem for sometime: I've only been able to see the work microscopically for the last month. In prose writing terms it's a nice place to be, but not at the expense of the story - that needs a constant macro point of view. Right now I can't see the wood for the jacaranda trees. It's set in Buenos Aires, by the way.

To avoid these difficulties, Saul Bellow once advised a friend to work on two projects at the same time; he found that switching from one project to the other constantly refreshed him, inviting new perspectives, new enthusiasms, new solutions. To avoid similar gestalt blindness, Jackson Pollock used to have a number of paintings on the go. When he returned to unfinished work he'd go through what he called his "getting acquainted" period - he wanted to see the statement rather than the composition.

The Bellow/Pollock method is useful and I've followed it in the past. In this instance however, the Buenos Aires novel seems to have elbowed all my other writing projects out of the way. And although one might be forgiven for thinking this might be a good thing in a obsessive, Romantic, uber-artist sort of way; it isn't. I'm just too happy to jettison story for the pursuit of perfect sentences (at least in this case). And it's not good practice.

So I'm starting another novel. (Yes, I know it seems dilettantish, but I'm desperate.) It's a schizophrenic time - I'm mentally living in two cities, during two seasons, in two decades. Yet as a "trick" it seems to be working. The focus of the Buenos Aires novel has shifted in my mind. I only see the story now; I am feeling it as an organic whole once again. And I think I know where I was going wrong. At the moment (a few days in), it feels like the cure to all writing ills.

However, I am sure there are those who believe that to reach a sufficient depth of insight and feeling you must work on one project to the exclusion of all else. All I have to say to that is Saul Bellow wrote Herzog whilst working on a number of plays and short-stories, and according to the New Yorker it is "a well-nigh faultless novel". Arguably Pollock did all his best work in the time it took Bellow to write Herzog, at one point 10 paintings at a time. It really is a great method. I just hope you don't have to be a genius to make it work.