Sunday, October 28, 2012

The In Between Drift


Now that I have finished writing and editing Dodge the Sun, I’ve been thrown into a strange twilight zone of in between writing. It’s a dark land full of indecision and hesitation. The fact that I concentrate on a single project at a time instead of working on multiple ones makes the move harder. After spending an entire year inside one manuscript, living in the characters’ heads, it’s difficult to jump forward. There’s a strange reluctance to put aside these very real people you’ve created, and put all your energies into something new. I tend to drift and do no writing. It’s almost like a grieving process.

So I’ve given myself two months, and it’s time to get back into the swing. I miss creating. But do I go back and work on an unfinished project? Maybe try a short story to stop the drift until I’m ready for a full novel. Keep drifting by continuing to concentrate on querying while entering agent contests and not write at all? Start a sequel? Jumping into something large and totally new? It’s not an easy decision, especially with upcoming edits to Kindar which will interrupt anything I start.

I guess I’m trying to say that there will probably be a blog slowdown as I find my way. For now I’m trying to write a prequel short story to Kindar. It’s not really flowing yet. My word counts wouldn’t make me a NaNoWrite star. It is progress. A hundred words at a time is good enough for a start.

Does anyone else go through the twilight zone in between projects? How do you handle it and how long does it last for you?  



  

1 comment:

  1. OMG, yes! I think it gets worse when you get published because you hate to start something new when you know you have all kinds of work coming down the pike (all the production work of editing and then pre-release marketing and such). I'm waiting for beta reader feedback on Book 2 and I'm in that twilight zone now, not sure what to do while I'm waiting for them. Then once I submit it to the publisher, I'll hate to start anything new because I know I'll be getting on that production hampster wheel again! I guess it's all about learning how to balance the multiple hats we wear as authors.

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