I have finished the rough draft of the current novel-in-progress. It’s not done by any means, but now I have the whole of the story in my head and I can see so many places that need fixing. However, I haven’t started fixing the novel yet. I’m in that in-between phase that few authors ever speak of.
It’s the “Flailing About” Phase.
My experience is that I have just spent the last 4-6 weeks on “deadline mode.” This mode includes things like “no internet before word count” and “2000 words a day” and “hard core focus on the novel” and nothing else. Lots of creative people know what that’s like.
But, just like post-con blues are a thing, so is the post-novel flap. You’ve known what you were to do everyday for a month without exception. You’ve gotten into the groove. But now the groove is gone. It’s almost like discovering you have hands and discovering your pants have no pockets. What the heck to you do with your hands now?
If you are a regular writer, I recommend a quick once-over, adding all the things you know you need to add RIGHT NOW. Then putting the manuscript away for three months while you write something (anything) else. But, as I am a media tie-in writer, too, I don’t have time for that. I need to turn in the polished manuscript within 3 weeks. That’s my deadline.
But I don’t wanna. I don’t wanna work on the novel. I don’t wanna do the work I know I need to do. What do I want to do? I don’t know and I don’t wanna figure it out. See: flailing about.
Usually I have a bunch of interviews lined up to work on. Which I did this time, too. But they are done. And I polish-edited a short story and turned it in already. I have 3 more short stories to write but I’m not anywhere near doing them. I haven’t even outlined them on paper. Maybe I have in my head, but I don’t want to face the tyranny of the blank page. It is so much easier to fix what’s on the page than to create it wholesale.
Which leads me back to…start the next pass on the novel…and I don’t wanna.
Thus, I’m writing a blog post about the situation. I’m sure other authors have written about this phase of the novel writing process, but I figured it couldn’t hurt if other authors (and readers) understood a little more of what some authors (at least me) sometimes go through. The process of writing and editing novels is always changing, but I think the general phases of the process remain the same.
See? That’s about 500 words of verbal flailing and “productive procrastination” to help me avoid the edits I will begin next. Or tomorrow. It all depends on whether or not I figure out something else to do to avoid what I don’t want to do now.
But still, by tomorrow, I will roll up my sleeves and dive into fixing the novel because this is the “post” part of my mantra of “fix it in post.”
Have a cat picture. Here’s Mena in her tower.
