My wife looked at me last week and said, “Well, you’ve been in a funk the last couple days.”
Now, you might think she meant I listened to a lot of James Brown and Marvin Gaye, which is always possible, but no, she meant I was moody.
I knew what she was talking about, yet I didn’t know why I was in a funk. I started thinking about it and it came to me: book grief.
I had heard of it before, and I probably experienced it to some degree a couple years ago after I finished the Blades of War, but honestly, I didn’t really believe in it. It sounded lame.
And to be honest, it is lame. Like most of you, I’ve experienced real grief. Real people in my life have passed away, whether after a long illness or suddenly. And that hurts like crap.
This isn’t near as bad as that. But there is a type of grief that happens.
For the last two months, and a little more, I tried to write 2k words a day. That’s a couple hours a day. On Saturdays or other days off, that might be more like 4-5 hours of writing up to 8k a day.
If I’m a good writer, and that is up for debate, then my characters should live and breathe like real people. They have pasts, they have desires, hopes, dreams, fears, all of it. I saw them in my head and lived with them. I don’t think I would say they were my friends, but I knew them fairly intimately. Now they’re gone. Poof.
There was no grief after Make a God. I went right into The Pack, like a rebound, I guess. Now that I’m taking a break, I miss the story. I don’t miss the work and the sacrifice, but I miss the people and the story. And in some way, since I wrote The Pack less from an outline and more in an organic flow, it was even more personal and real. Maybe the grief is worse for that reason, too.
I’m getting motivated and inspired for the next book. I want to start it in January. There’s work to do. But the motivation for the next book, The Fire Reborn, is I want to revisit the story and the characters. I want to see Caleb again. I want to watch Aden continue to grow. How will Eshlyn react and act in the war to come? I want to experience the battles and the struggle with them. And I want to share it with you, the reader.
I know. It’s lame. But it’s why we write.
Peace.