Dorienne's Log

I’ve been in a weird place mentally these past few days. I’ll say mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Most of this I’ll attribute to the fact that the book is done and I’m trying to remember who I was and what I did before delving so wholly into the book. A week later, it is still difficult. I’ve got about nine or ten beta readers and now I’m just playing the waiting game and resisting the urge to PM, IM or e-mail every single one of them everyday just to see how it is going. Perhaps so much of my psyche is being spent trying to keep that OCD down that everything else is coming out that would normally be held in check.

I told one of my students to “shut up” after she said a sardonic comment. It was meant in good fun and she laughed about it, but I’m still shocked that it came out like that. I hadn’t meant to say it, but it just fell out and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Yesterday, I said something else that was pretty mean without even thinking about it. Again, it just fell out before I could stop myself.

Maybe my “body, mind and soul” are all in recovery after the book. I have handwritten two previous to this one, but neither was anywhere near the length of Flight and I completed them over the course of several years. This time around I wrote nearly 400K words in close to eight months. This last month took a lot out of me and I am still stewing in the consequences. It even threw me off cycle, which had been going like clockwork…

Life slowly, but surely falling back into a place, yet every once in a while I find myself asking “Well, now what do I do?” I suppose it will all work out in the end, but I hope that I can get through this lull without anymore not-so-Christian outbursts.