sunday.

[sunfright]

Today has been dreary. It has also been very warm (by Danish standards, 20 degrees Celcius mid-May is pretty hot) which may have added to the dreariness. I deal very poorly with heat - and air conditioning is not something most houses have here, so I have slept a lot and stayed inside in the cool shadows.

I have really felt the come-down today, from finishing The Year of the Wolf yesterday. I have been filled with interchangable feelings of pride, accomplishment, eagerness to start editing and complete and utter depression, all in one big blend.

On one hand, I've felt a drive towards immediately starting something new (and I have a project - cw for Christian and religious themes - on the backburner that I hope to start working on more seriously once I've sent this fic off to my beta) and on the other hand, I feel like... this may sound stupid, but this fic feels like my child and I'm not ready for the umbilical chord to be cut yet, does that make sense? I want to hold this fic in my arms and nurse it, that's pretty much what it feels like. And I say that without ever having given birth.

My gf can't guarantee when during the next week she will be able to print the whole thing, which - fair - it's 340 pages long, so I'll be starting my reread in Word tomorrow and see for how long I can stand that. I'm really bad at reading stuff on a screen, especially long things. Just doesn't work for me, but I'll give it a try, I just really want to keep my toes dipped in this piece, that's basically it.

I reread my own English translation of Omina, the poetry collection that inspired this fic, earlier today and I am continuously mesmerized by it, but it also gave me the chance of correcting some continuity issues and details that I'd kind of just ignored while writing, thinking I could catch it in the editing process.

Well, apparently the editing process has begun.

No better way to spend Mother's Day which is always a bummer in this household, so.

If anyone has any tips on how to survive the writing postpartum process, I'm all ears. Right now I'm definitely struggling a little.

Comments

[pipisafoat]

Re: postpartum writing process - first of all, excellent description, I know exactly what you mean XD Secondly, I'm not super sure. I tend to write shorter fic for the most part, or series that can be stopped at any point and considered complete, or recently I have abandoned writing in an entire fandom for Complicated Reasons (aka I want to try to be a better person, and I don't know how to do it while still in that fandom) so that meant abandoning a few series there. I also tend towards working on original stuff and then getting frustrated and giving up, but that "doesn't matter" because nobody has seen any of it yet so it's like it doesn't exist.

But generally speaking, I find that I'm happiest when I write, so whether it's a sequel or something totally different, I dive right back into it. Your mileage may vary! Whatever you do, I hope you find the right-for-you choice. I have faith in you.

-Wolf (sa/they)