Random Posts2

It’s odd, but writers are often reluctant to turn loose of their finished manuscripts.  I’m not sure what it is about letting them go, whether it’s the feeling that improvements could still be made if you just read the thing one more time, the knowledge that someone else will be reading and judging the work now or, maybe, a vague unwillingness to share what you’ve created because then it will become just a story instead of part of the alternate universe in your mind.  All I know is that it rises up after a manuscript leaves my hands, making me wish I had it back again.  I also feel at loose ends, as if I’ve lost something of my purpose in life.  Oh, I have things I’ve been longing or planning to do but couldn’t get to them because of The Book, things I can’t wait to start on now.  Still, I miss my story, my internal world which, for now, is New Orleans circa the 1840s.  Yet, the weird thing is that when I’ve done the proposal for the next book and shipped that off, done the home improvements and hobby projects, the visiting and planned travel and lunches with friends that usually fills the time between books, I know very well that it will be difficult to get back into the writing mind-set.  I’ll have to force myself to sit down in front of my computer and put words on paper, one after the other.  Eternal contradiction, I suppose it just goes with scribbling.