After finishing the draft and passing it off to the Final Three, I granted myself a two week writing vacation; it ends Friday. Until then, only blogging and reading–no new material or revisiting older manuscripts. My self imposed exile has a precedent.
A few years ago I finished a draft of one novel and immediately dove face first into another. Maybe it was more like fist first into face. Two months into the new manuscript I became so frustrated, I almost stopped writing for good. Not sure if I would have stayed that course forever–likely not, I think–but the thought of quitting was very tempting and seemed absolutely reasonable in the moment. My mind wanted to wander a little bit, explore other areas, tackle issues beside those conflicts my characters devised. Racing ahead without pause proved a disaster, though this presumptive crusade served up a great lesson: Let the batteries discharge completely before fueling them back up for another big project. The manuscript that I almost quit writing over due to frustration, by the way, is the very one in the hands of the Final Three. Lesson learned.
Still, the respite begs the question: what’s next? Well, something different, thanks to the idea hopper. A focusing technique, the hopper a mechanism for capturing the spirit of ideas as they arrive without derailing a project in hand. Each time an interesting–and oh so unrelated–seed takes root, intriguing enough that it threatens to divert my attention away from the story in progress, I draft a synopsis and save it for later reference. Right now there’s twelve ideas in the idea hopper.

Now I just need to pick one.