I am between books - which is an awful lot like being between jobs. It is a bit of a misnomer. I mean, I will only be between books if at some future moment I write another and right now I am still at the post coital stage - not yet ready to contemplate doing it all again. I'm lying around all passion spent, utterly exhausted, wondering vaguely if it will be good for the reader too.
I finished my last book a week or so ago. I've a few minor tweaks to do and then it's truly over and done with, out of my hands. I have tidied my office (Well, I have had guests,) read a few novels. I am even toying with going to the gym. I have made a start on my 'to do' list - chiefly by writing this - and I am wondering if I should update my website, clean my windows, sort out my kids' wardrobes, clear out the aptly named 'horrible cupboard' under the stairs - you get the picture: I have a very long 'to do' list which is in itself an excellent incentive for writing something new.
The madness, my writing frenzy, has gone now. It is as if it never was and now even the details of the story are beginning to recede. The book that consumed me is now 'my last book',a hazy memory. The next book is not even a twinkle in my tired eyes. I'm in no man's land, a place between worlds, calm, peaceful and ever so slightly lost.
I like the space between books once I know I am indeed between books, once I can see my way clear to beginning to consider the possibility of thinking of another one, once I know that this is just a place between and not my final destination.
5 comments:
I'm at exactly the same point. I find that digging my allotment helps.
It is always incredibly reassuring to know that other writers get this too. I always imagined that published writers must have somehow found a cure for the idea-void and the accompanying angst. Not so.
Also nice to know that everyone has a 'horrible cupboard'. We call ours the Cupboard of Doom.
I too am between projects. It makes me incredibly jittery. I clean the bathroom. Doesn't help the jitters, but it does reduce the chances of us contracting cholera.
I like your 'waste land' picture. It looks a calm, stern, dry place.
I'm between books too: but I know what I want to do next and so am brimming with excitement.
It will come to you - all of you!
Having read your latest Warriors book, and loved it, I'd say you're having a well-earned rest.
I find this interim period is the time when suddenly I can have health checks, spring clean, see friends etc. But the bad times wioth a book are so very bad that you do almost anything rather than write. I actually had a tooth out during my last....
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