Everything is very strange, now.
Yesterday I finally finished ALL of the bulk of the work of producing all eight volumes of Saga of the God-Touched Mage. Really. Completely. Well, except that there’s a little work left to do to insert covers as they are completed, but the rest is done and the inclusion of covers is relatively simple at this point. This means I’m now fully faced with the struggle of jumping into new projects.
As a general rule this isn’t such a big deal for me. In fact, I usually have two or three projects going at once, and am constantly playing tag with them. But my decision to launch eight volumes in a row with two weeks between them each was an interesting exercise that I didn’t really plan well for. It was an all-encompassing thing that I soon realized would require me to set everything else aside. So that’s what I did. I set it all aside, and focused on the project before me.
Now that project is gone, and I have to admit I’m having to kick my brain to get it out of the track (rut?) it was in. It helps that I have an actual project to focus on—something I’ll speak of more when I’m able (oooo … sounds super-secret, doesn’t it?)—but even then it’s still proving to be hard to stay in the zone right now. I’m pulling out all my tricks, free writing, characterizing, describing places and dealing with all five senses. But it’s only working a little. I have about a thousand words I like as a result of the day.
But, you know what?
That’s about a thousand words more than I started the day with.