On the eve of leaving for my evil scientist convention (Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, for those of you who want to know), I finished a major edit of my WIP. I decided that I'd give myself some time off, because conferences are sort of draining, kind of like walking from California to New York might take a while. How conferences go for me is, well, a mystery that I won't go into, but I will say that I got a total of six hours of sleep over a 72 hour period. Yeah, not pretty.
When I got back from the conference, I went to work on the dissertation, and because of that, the last chapter has been completely revised, and now I have to go through and redo all 39 figures (39?! what's wrong with me?), so that's taking up more than the usual amount of time.
Why do I talk about this stuff? Well, Newton was right, Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, while objects at rest are likely to remain at rest. In short, there is momentum in writing, and once broken, it's hard to build it back up again. I know that I need to give my brain a break from the work I just did, but now I'm sort of at a crossroads, what do I work on?
Do I do more editing, or do I plunge into first draft land?
And no, for the record, the dissertation doesn't count.
Up next, by popular demand, mind: Crazy Dreams ("Was it that one where you're standing on a pyramid in sun god robs, while naked women through pickles at you? Why am I the only one who has that dream?"--Real Genius). And for the record, I don't take credit for my crazy dreams, but one of my novels (one that I'm thinking about redoing, but not for a long while), came from a dream.
Maybe draft a short story or a novella...something to let you write while at the same time giving you a break from the book you just edited but won't be as heavy as a whole 'nother book.
ReplyDeleteAs for the stress dreams, I think they're normal. I hope they're normal. Because I'm pretty sure I dreamed that Jodi Reamer was trying to kill me last night. True story.