Well, Squiders, I’ve finished the first draft of the third book of my high fantasy trilogy.
Now, I don’t know how you guys work, but when I close to the end of a draft, I get all fidgety and restless, and all I can think about is the story, and my friends all get sick of me because I essentially just say variations of “Oh my God, I’m almost done with my book!” instead of regular conversation.
And then, when I finish the draft, there’s this feeling of, well, depression, almost. Because you don’t get to work with those characters anymore, or follow their adventures, and it’s somewhat sad.
But it’s worse this time. I invented these characters when I was 15. I laid out the trilogy (though not admittedly in a form that resembles the current project) at 16. I started writing the first draft of the first book at 22.
I’m 31 now.
I’ve literally been working with these characters for over half my life.
And the whole project has had its ups and downs, and there were a few years in there where we hit some major snags and nothing of any real consequence got done, but I’ve been thinking about and working on it for a long time now. And it’s weird to now that I’ll never sit back down and explore their world with them again.
I mean, I’m obviously not done. I’ve got to figure out how to edit a trilogy, where each book is intricately connected, rather than a single book, and then I need to, you know, actually do it. And I’d like, for these books, to go the traditional route. So I’ll get to work with them some more.
But the plot is done, and I don’t foresee any major changes to it unless my betas find something major that I’ve missed, so their story is essentially set.
And while I’ve always known how the story ends, it’s still very weird to have actually gotten there, to have written “The End.”
Any trilogy editing tips, Squiders? (Or tips in general about whatever you want?) What do you do when you finish a major project to combat the finishing depression?
