How, in the name of the gods, is it Monday again?
I suppose it didn’t help that I finished the werelion book on Saturday. I predicted a weekend spent working; lo and behold, here we are. The book will probably please nobody but me, but it’s done. Or at least, the zero draft is and I can decide how to go on from here. There’ll be a rough polish before it goes fully up as a serial for a couple months, and during that time there’ll be editing and prep for it to release as an actual book. Then it’ll be off the serial platform (this is the best way to fully try said platform) for a couple months, and after that, it can go out into the world and stop bothering me.
Of course, its bother has retreated to a dull whining sound at the back of my head, and now I’m deep in the throes of snapback. I just did a Friday Tea about snapback; I think the next one this upcoming Friday will be a little bit more about how to recover from a zero. Even if one is sure a completed zero draft is terrible and useless, one has still done something only a relatively small proportion of writers have by actually finishing the damn thing, and that’s worth celebration and praise.
I’ve the next slate of projects queued up in a nice little row–the second Hell’s Acre season, the second Sons of Ymre, the second Tolkien Werewolves book, and by then it’ll be time for the next Steelflower, I think. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be doing The Highlands War as a serial when Hell’s Acre is finished, but that’s months out since the second season of the latter is just as long as the first. Plus there’s the third book in the Ghost Squad series to build since the second is resting with the editor.
But all that is for after I recover. Today and tomorrow will probably be picking at the werelion serial’s bones, so to speak, in order to get the flywheel inside my head to spin down. The massive mental and emotional (not to mention physical, my wrists bloody well ache) effort of getting a usable, novel-length chunk of text means that once the damn thing is finished all that energy is suddenly whipping wildly in the wind, throwing sparks, an engine unconnected to a transmission and revving wildly. Learning how to ride that last, bumpy, decelerating portion of the rollercoaster and stagger off towards another rickety carnival contraption is a large part of the writing game.
Doing it during a still-going pandemic and slow-moving fascist coup is a new one for me, though. All things considered, even if the werelion book is crap, creating anything under these conditions is a victory.
So I’ll be taking it relatively easy for the next couple days, surveying what I have wrought and attempting to find some rest from my labours. The last time a book possessed me like this was Moon’s Knight, and I was super unsure that one would get any readers at all. It seems to be doing all right, so I am taught once again to just let the work go and know the readers will find it. Funny how that works.
I hope your weekend was calm and happy, my friends. Easter, Ramadan, and Passover (not to mention a Hindu festival) all on the same weekend–it seems like everyone should be too busy feasting and celebrating to be awful to each other, especially over religion. I mean, I know humans will fight over literally anything, anytime, anywhere, but it’s a nice thought and today there will be a lot of candy on sale.
That’s called looking on the bright side, as we often do here at the Chez. And now I need to watch Life of Brian again. (“Worse things happen at sea, you know.”) Part of the recovery process for me includes movies, so I guess that’s my afternoon or evening sorted.
Just got to get through the rest of the day first. Better get started on that.
See you around.