Post Second Draft Depression

Actually, I don't know what to call this. I finished my second draft of Novel Three on Sunday. Like, all I did on Sunday was write and do laundry. I didn't clean, I barely cooked, all I did was write. I was almost stressing about it and I nearly did a jig when I wrote "The End" at the bottom of the last page, took a picture of it, and sent it to my husband.

So, this is where I put the novel to bed and let it age for a little bit before I start working on the third draft. I let my first one sit a year before touching it again. The second one sat for a month. This one I have scheduled to sit for two months, mostly because I have vacation coming in May and I don't want to be in the middle of draft three and then have to stop for a week. I'm happiest when I can maintain a little consistency.

Except I can't let it go.

I plucked it out of my writing pile yesterday and started reading it again, even though I had read through the whole thing on Monday. Since my first two drafts are done longhand, I bring them to work with me and write when I have a lull between patients. Tuesday and yesterday I brought my current notebook to work and used some writing prompts to keep me busy, but then I finished the list of prompts, too. Ugh.

I am going back and working on Novel One based on a critique I got on it, but I need my computer to do that and I can't (won't) bring that to work. Me standing and writing in a notebook generates the occasional question. Me pounding away on my laptop makes it look like I'm playing on Facebook or something unless they're actually looking at the screen. I don't care if they think I'm writing. I don't want them thinking I'm completely goofing off.

Anyway, I feel out of sorts and I'm not sure where to go now. I do have a couple sections of Novel One I want to redo on a large scale, but I still need my computer to do that. I guess today Novel Three is coming to work with me again and I'll have to maybe print the chapters that I want to work on from Novel One and bring them with me to scratch away at in my current notebook. Probably could have done that today, but I'm blogging instead so...