Storytellersunplugged

First there’s the whole during part of the novel, where your head is packed full of all the things you need to remember, the plot developments and the character arcs and the themes and layers and leitmotifs. And you have a tendency to stare off during dinner as if, at any moment, you might start building a scale model of a rock formation out of the mashed potatoes.

But then, once you’ve survived that and the book is in the can, there’s the stage afterwards, a state which I refer to as “post-novel ennui.” At least, in polite company.

Edward Gorey does admit of this part of the process in his book The Unstrung Harp, or, Mr Earbrass Writes a Novel,, which might be the only honest book on writing for a living in existence. He writes, in part:

The next day, Mr Earbrass is conscious but very little more. He wanders through the house leaving doors open and empty tea-cups on the floor. From time to time, the thought comes to him that he really ought to go and dress, and he gets up several minutes later, only to sit down again in the first chair he comes to. The better part of a week will have elapsed before he has recovered enough to do anything more helpful.

This description is, in my experience, exactly and precisely true. Except in my case, it’s also coupled with the deep and abiding belief that one ought to be doing something. Starting the next book, say. Or catching up on one’s research. Or cleaning out the refrigerator.

And thus, in this household, the post-novel ennui takes on a character of fitful and desultory activity. Or sometimes, obsessive activity that peters out somewhere in the middle. For example, I handed in a novel in late March. And then promptly rearranged my entire living room and started a massive spring cleaning project…

…which has now turned into a massive spring ignoring project, as I wander around, unable to concentrate on a book or even a TV show or computer game, prone to fits of insomnia and making lists of things I really ought to be doing and yet, somehow, am not.

In this state, I’m pretty much unable to write anything coherently. Talking to friends, answering email and IMs and answering the phone seems like a tremendous chore. It would probably be safest for everyone concerned if I could withdraw to a 10×10 cabin in the Montana woods and wait it out.

Alas, life is demanding.

It can also be a little panic-inducing to live through, because one does, long about the fifth or tenth day of this state, start to wonder if one’s brain is broken. If one will ever regenerate the necessary strength of will and coherence of thought to carry out one’s daily tasks, let alone write another book. Fortunately, experience is a great teacher, and over the course of years and novels one discovers that the ennui inevitably does break, if one gives one’s self time.

It doesn’t make it any more enjoyable when one is in the middle of it, checking livejournal for the seventy-fifth time in an afternoon to see if anybody has posted anything, and realizing that one is still in one’s pajamas and hasn’t managed to feed one’s self today. There is, under those circumstances, a certain aura of despair that can begin to surround one, as it sinks in exactly how much time one is wasting and to how little effect.

And there appears to be nothing one can do to speed the regeneration process. It is simply, like grief and driving long distances, a matter of allowing enough time.

But it does make it more endurable, the knowledge that the fallow period eventually ends.

And in the meantime, there is always spider solitaire.

That is, if you can muster the span of attention.