finishing up a novel is weird

I finished the revisions on my latest novel—Go me!—and am now in that state of near hysteria while I wait for my assorted beta-readers to tell me it’s crap get back to me.

So, I’m using this period of waiting to plan out the next novel, which turns out to be an amalgam of twenty ideas I’ve been stirring around for years. It’s like examining a very fragile flower—if I try to pull the petals apart to see how it all fits together, heck if I even look at it too hard, it withers and tears apart. Instead, I have to gaze casually at it, all patience and Buddha-like equanimity, and wait for it to unfold. Maybe I can sort of…breathe on it. A little. In encouragement. But that’s it.

I keep reminding myself that I won’t know what this particular flower looks like for at least a year. That is, it generally takes me a year to finish a book, and I rarely get the whole picture until I am finishing up. I do it so ass backwards!! It’s all very annoying.

But it’s the way of it. Or my way of it. And I’ve finally come to trust the process. Even as I’m going ape shit, I can calmly nod my head and say, yes, this is the part of writing a novel where I go ape shit. Right on schedule.

What a bizarre activity. Why can’t I get into making fancy Parisian chocolates or something? It’d be so much easier!