John Baker’s Blog

That feeling. It’s when a particularly long piece, like a novel, is finally in the bag. You know you’ve finished it. It’s over. It was your life for the last so many months, maybe years. And now it’s gone. It’s out in the world on its own little feet.

While you were involved with it lots of ideas and possible directions were thrown up, and some of them became inextricably a part of the piece you were working on. Others did not. They couldn’t be incorporated and they were put on one side. Good ideas, wonderful ideas, but not useful at the time. They would form the basis of the next project, perhaps?

Like all that stuff in Hemingway’s suitcases. But that’s something else.

That feeling? It’s managing the hiatus. Should you begin again, something different, something similar? Should you dive in to another long haul or should you give yourself a break.

Recreation looms on the horizon like Yeates‘ rough beast out of Spiritus Mundi.

I don’t know the right answer. I don’t believe there is a right answer. What I do, usually, is to steep myself in the hiatus for as long as possible.

One of these alternatives will come to claim me eventually. They always do.

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