Going down and coming up

Going down and coming up.

Hitting rock bottom. Down down down. Further down. Sinking, Drowning. Can't breathe. Can't speak. Can't think. Why bother telling stories....

A writer friend said that he always felt bereft after finishing a novel. He understood. Sent advice that the only thing to do was to start writing another one and find new characters to fall in love with.

I'm trying but I can't quite wrench myself out of the PNG world of Aulani and the Sauly bird. I go into daydreams thinking about them. That's where I want to stay. I've felt like a statue. Can only sit and stare. Can't move to do anything.

Two things have helped.

The first is that three trusted friends, one of whom used to work in Papua New Guinea, all like my novel. I can trust them to give me honest feedback. They have done so before but this time I got glowing feedback from all three of them. The comments keep going around in my mind and I get a warm feeling. I'm going to have to hang on to these remarks because I know that I'll see a hundred things wrong with it very soon - and I know that I'll get rejections when I start submitting it to agents and publishers.

Still, hope springs up like a weed as Aulani would say.

I need to reread it, polish it and produce a final draft, write a synopsis and a query letter. I promised myself that I wouldn't start on this for another few weeks. A month to write. A month in the drawer. A month to finish and send.

This is the fastest thing I've ever written and the rest of my personal life has suffered because of it. I haven't practised my music, haven't paid attention to my admin, have missed people's birthdays. I'm trying to make up for that now.

The other thing I'm doing to counteract the awful feeling of losing the world I was in for most of the time is to create another one. As my friend advised. Write another one. Write another one. It started off as 'A man with green eyes' but it is becoming 'The wallpaper bird'. Same story. Different focus. And despite both the last one and this one having 'bird' in the title, they couldn't be more different. The new one is a mystery. The Sauly Bird is a psycho drama/ thriller.

I wish I knew what you were writing or reading. How is it going? Do you struggle like me? I wish you well and send you very best wishes. May words pour out of your pens and your keyboards and arrange themselves in perfect patterns. May your words set you free.