I finished a novel last week. Actually, I finished it in June, but the result was formless enough so that writing “The End” didn’t feel like much of an accomplishment.
This time, it felt different. There’s still a lot of work to do before it’s done, but it feels like a solid first draft. I’m putting it in a metaphorical drawer for awhile, and will pick it up in a few weeks.
Anyway. I’m not talking about my novel today.
I’m talking about what it feels like to not be writing it.
I feel a little unmoored. There’s this place I used to go to in my head that’s not there anymore. I finished last Thursday, my wife and I were watching a movie on Friday night, and I got bored and kinda left the “now” of the movie for a moment to disappear into my head (not an uncommon occurrence), and it felt like the door was locked. I couldn’t get into my favorite room! The disorientation lasted for a moment, I was soon wool-gathering on some other subject.
I felt that same sensation several times over the weekend, where for whatever reason I went to disappear into my head and found the spot I usually take inaccessible. I’m not sure why that’s true. It’s not like I am stopping work on the book; there’s no reason I can’t think about editing it in the same way I used to. Except I can’t. Some mental door has closed, temporarily. It’ll open back up eventually. And until it does, other rooms will take the novel room’s place, other stories, a new novel. It’s the work of my pesky habit of maladaptive daydreaming.
Still. It does leave me feeling a bit lonely.
I remember an interesting interview with Chuck Palahniuk about the reason why he doesn’t watch television and movies: a novel is such a big thing he doesn’t have room for it in his head if he makes room for media (I’m not going to bother looking up the exact quote). And while I am a big fan of television and movies, I understood exactly what he was talking about. Rewriting my first novel, Life Under Water, years ago, I remember not being able to see more than a hundred pages in either direction. It was too big. The new one, I can think of in its entirety. Part of that is a function of this book being more plot oriented. But part of it, I think, is just me slowly learning to get my head around that amount of material.
Anyway. I’ll write short stories for a few weeks, work on the rewrite, and continue planning the next novel (what I think of as the Pueblo novel), which I hope to start in January.
Peace.
The links. If you like my writing, buy a story!
My retelling of Rumpelstilkskin (A Woman Unbecoming, $4.99)
A Trick of the Light (NoSleep podcast, $1.99)
Goodneighbor.com (Dark Moon Digest, $2.99)
F*ck, Marry, Kill (self-published, Amazon, 99 cents)
Veronica Scissors (self-published, Amazon, 99 cents)