the muse needs a mental health day

Oh, man, I have been so tired this week.  First I blamed it on the heat.  Then I blamed it on the kids keeping me up at night.  Then I wondered if I was coming down with something.  At the same time, my attempts to get into my novel #7 revision have been going, let us say, poorly, as in, that insanity where the novel starts to look fundamentally flawed, perhaps even unsavable, and maybe I ought to just put it quietly to rest.

Oh. Crap.

But then it dawned on me!  I really did just finish a huge creative project this week.  And despite that, I have been trying to launch right into another one, with no break.  It isn’t the my current novel completely sucks, it’s that the muse is tired.

I suppose my confusion is understandable because I’ve been working on the novel all through the podcast production (albeit lightly) so it seems reasonable I would simply continue to do so.  And the podcast production was not ‘writing a novel’—although I did edit it more as I went, but still, not the same as creating the novel from beginning to end, I don’t think, anyway, so why should I be tired?  And also I’ve never worked on two big projects at the same time before, so I guess I thought I would just keep on with the novel, amping it up even, now that I was done with the podcast. And why not, right?  What’s to stop me?

The muse, that’s who.  If I won’t take a break, she’ll trash my book out of just wanting to be free to not work on it anymore.

So, um, in the interest of not having my muse throw a big dramatic scene and QUIT ON ME, I think I’ll, um, take a few days off.  Maybe more.  Total permission not to have to work on anything.  Watch some movies, play guitar, hang with the kiddos, no getting up early, no planning and plotting and problem solving, just for a bit.  To keep her happy.  And we all know, what a writer needs most, beside a six-figure contract, is a happy muse.

It is true that I always take a break after finishing a novel.  I know that about writing, that I need time to rest in between projects.  I just didn’t know that putting out an audio book would fall in the same category.  Maybe it’s a more creative act that I have been thinking.  There are certainly many creative decisions to be made throughout the process, plus performance, that’s creative.  Making an audio book is not just reading out loud that’s for sure.

So, anyway, duh.  I need to regroup before I can jump back in.  Which is annoying because I really want this novel to be done.  But trying to force it has been backfiring on my ass all week.  Sigh.  But the good news is, and I love it when there is good news: I don’t need to trash the whole novel! I just need a break from it.

I’m a bit of a task-master, I guess.  Time to lighten up.  So.  Taking the weekend off.  Three days off.  Doing no writing related work.  Nothing.

I can do this.