What Happens When You Finish a Book

I have some writer friends, professionals who make much of their living from writing, who finish one book and immediately start another. No downtime. No decompression. No wait between. I don't make my living from writing and don't usually have to do that.

l declared my latest book done this morning and sent it in to the Editor. About 73,000 words. A western/historical. I understand there may be edits down the line but for now I can let that work slip out of my mind. Or can I? Easier said than done.

The first part of the book was a bit of a struggle but once the characters jelled it became a lot of fun. And now it's done. And I don't have another book contract immediately. I have a few minutes to breath. But on my walk I found myself working over the ending of the book again. I had to make myself stop. And last night when I went to bed, I had to force my thoughts into unusual channels because I was not still writing the book, only giving it the final read through to make sure it was as good as I could make it.

Now, what am I going to do with myself today? Well, if you're reading this then you know one thing I'm doing. It's not a book but I'm going to write something today anyway. This blog, and probably a short flash fiction I've been asked to do. But not the book I've lived with for the past four months (give or take).

And what will I do tonight when I lay down to sleep? Every night for months now I've been living inside that book for a little while when I laid down. Tonight I won't need to. Tonight my thoughts will be free. That's kind of scary.

One Down

One of the four large-scale writing tasks that I’ve set for myself for the rest of this year is finished. Several years back a couple of colleagues and I wrote a small (35,000 words) Guidebook for our students on how to write term papers and research reports. We’d gotten a grant to do so and it turned out pretty well. We self published it within the department just for our students, but we’ve had intentions ever since of expanding it a bit and then attempting to find a publisher for it.

My first task this summer was to revise the work with such an attempt in mind. I expanded it to a bit over 40,000 and updated a bunch of references, as well as making the book more generic rather than targeted at Xavier students. One of my two colleagues has retired, but I’ll send the revised manuscript to the other and he’ll double check my work as well as putting in stuff that he feels we need. Then when he’s done I’ll give it a final go over for consistency’s sake and we’ll send it off.

But as for now, and as for my part, I’m done and am going to take this Memorial Day off and read. I’ve started another of L’Amour’s Hopalong Cassidy novels, and am also just getting into Mahars of Pellucidar by John Eric Holmes, an ERB pastiche. Both are good so far.

Enjoy your day everyone.