WIP Withdrawal

My hands are all twitchy and my mind keeps insisting that I’m forgetting to do something. It’s only been four days since I finished writing my latest novel, but I feel so lost without it. I mean, I spent 53 straight days (minus three random ones) writing at least an hour—if not two or three—per day and now that I’m not, I’m wandering around aimlessly, wondering what to do with myself.

Of course, I have plenty of books to read. With so much of my time spent on writing, I didn’t read like I normally do. Plus, on average I buy more books per week than I can read, so the stacks of books I haven’t read yet have been growing rapidly in the last 53 days. And I am reading—since Saturday, I’ve finished Mandy Hubbard’s RIPPLE and Elizabeth Scott’s BETWEEN HERE AND FOREVER and I’ve started Richelle Mead’s VAMPIRE ACADEMY—but it’s just not the same.

I love creating a story and writing the words to go with it. I love that when I’m writing a WIP, I think about it in every spare moment. I love to write the next scene in my head, play with the characters and their actions, let them surprise me with something amazing that changes part of the story’s outcome. I love to turn on my playlist and settle into my library chair and get those 1K+ words written on my laptop. Did I mention that I miss all that?

Not that being done with the first draft means I’m finished with the manuscript. I have plenty of revisions to do, but I was planning to wait a few weeks to let my mind settle, my hands relax, and the MS chill. I don’t think I’ll make it a few weeks. I’ve already got a list of things big and small to fix that I either forgot to tie up or that didn’t occur to me before.

Plus, I’m eager to get this MS to my critique partners. I want to know what they think…by which I mean I REALLY WANT TO KNOW. And I want them to catch all the loose ends I’ve missed. And I want them to help me find other things that I probably overlooked. Oh, I love reading their comments, good and bad. I want to make this MS as good as possible…

…so that I can start entering it into contests. Yep, that’s right. I may not have had much success with my last MS in contests, but that doesn’t mean this one won’t have any. I feel like this one is more accessible than the last. Also, I see contests more as an opportunity to hone my pitch so that it’ll someday be ready to query than as an opportunity to find an agent. (Okay, not that I’d be complaining or anything to get an agent through a contest. I’D LOVE THAT.)

But I’m getting months ahead of myself. For now, I have to sit here with my twitchy fingers and nagging mind and wait just a little bit longer before I start revisions. And I’ve got that other MS that I’m currently querying, so there’s always more query letters to write. And there are these stacks of books I want to read. Yeah, maybe I’ll go do that.