I’ve written about this before, with The Name and the Key. Now it’s come back with The Step and the Walk.

I have finished the book! Yay! …But why do I feel kind of bummed about it? I did a cursory search on Google to see if any other writer has run into this (they have) and found this Reddit post about one writer’s experience.

I haven’t experienced sleep issues or a deep depression yet (that I know of–I’m not always the best at recognizing my own symptoms) but I do have this listless feeling.

Part of me doesn’t want to let the book sit and to go through it one more time for final edits and proofreading. I only have about a month left to do this.

Another part of me wants to get started on The Fear and the Flame as soon as possible, because that is also on a deadline, and because I have only snippets of scenes in my head and not a full plot, I’m having a feeling this one is going to take me longer to write than The Step and the Walk, so I should start it soon. If I start it as soon as possible, I can run into my usual problems sooner, and have more time to fix them (this is my logic).

But there is advice to just sit and let things simmer.

I mentioned in the post I wrote earlier today that I was going to let The Step and the Walk have a breather, but I haven’t figured out how long of a break to take. My gut says to take a week only. But there’s some advice out there suggesting to take even longer than that.

Author Caroline Hardaker writes about the need for a break on her website:

[You] Need time to forget, not be so emotionally invested. You have to start editing your second draft with as clean a slate as possible. You want to come at it like a new reader. Only this way will you start spotting inconsistencies and elements that don’t quite tie up.

On Meg Dowell Writes, Meg says,

So, breaks are great. They have the potential to reignite your motivation, help you view your narrative with a clearer head, and you’ll hopefully avoid “work still in progress” burnout. But how long of a break should you take? How short is too short? How long is too long?

Unfortunately, I can only recommend what I have found works for me: One month. I’ve found that this gives me enough time to focus on other projects and almost “forget” the details of the one I just finished working on. But I’m not away from it for so long that I completely lose interest.

It’s really up to you, though — maybe you can try different lengths of time and figure out what works best for you.

I don’t have a month to wait because The Step and the Walk is due in just under a month, so I need to take some time from that to do a final check-up. But my gut is telling me to take a week off of the book and then go back into it.

I should probably wait like 2-3 weeks before starting The Fear and the Flame, though, and try my hand at filling out a deep outline to fill in the story gaps I have in my brain. The Fear and the Flame is the trilogy ender, so it absolutely has to go out with a bang.

I know this is stating the obvious, but sometimes being a writer is really hard!