Post-novel syndrome
Dec. 29th, 2006 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienNo, not me, not now. (I can only wish. Maybe next year?)
But![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala had a post about post-novel ennui, and I remembered something. I've finished three novel-length first drafts, and for the first two I definitely felt lost, drained, and slightly weepy the next day. One was a seven-year epic, the other an eight-month burst of creativity I've never been able to repeat since. The third one, though (which went fairly fast for the first six months while I was only working part-time, and then slowed right down when I moved to London), I don't remember having any particular effect.
That would be because I typed 'The End' in a Heathrow hotel room on a Friday evening, and flew to America the next day to start a new job on the Monday. I was definitely below par that week, but I put that down to jet-lag and culture shock, and if there were any post-novel effects they got swamped by everything else. I know I started writing again fairly soon after that -- within a week or two at most -- but the story that I started then is still lying around waiting for an ending and some bits of middle.
But
matociquala had a post about post-novel ennui, and I remembered something. I've finished three novel-length first drafts, and for the first two I definitely felt lost, drained, and slightly weepy the next day. One was a seven-year epic, the other an eight-month burst of creativity I've never been able to repeat since. The third one, though (which went fairly fast for the first six months while I was only working part-time, and then slowed right down when I moved to London), I don't remember having any particular effect.That would be because I typed 'The End' in a Heathrow hotel room on a Friday evening, and flew to America the next day to start a new job on the Monday. I was definitely below par that week, but I put that down to jet-lag and culture shock, and if there were any post-novel effects they got swamped by everything else. I know I started writing again fairly soon after that -- within a week or two at most -- but the story that I started then is still lying around waiting for an ending and some bits of middle.
