Factory layoff

I feel like I just got laid off, and in a sense that's exactly what happened.

Earlier this morning I finished the first draft of Project Y, tentatively titled Carnival Time against the advice and better judgement of the only two who have commented so far (including my dear wife).

Hooray for me! It feels great to have accomplished a huge personal goal. It's definitely not polished, it has some huge problems and it's light years from publication, but it's an actual, for-real novel. I think I've written a pretty entertaining story that gently explores relevant themes.

Now what?

In recent weeks I've read advice from two authors (one of them hugely successful) who both offer the identical suggestion: after completing the first draft: put the thing away for six weeks. Try not to even think about it as it stinks up your hard drive. Then return to it, and read through the entire manuscript before launching into the second draft. What you read after that layoff will almost seem to be the work of someone else, they say, and you'll feel less pain from the slashing and burning you're about to inflict on your precious forest of words.

I think I'll take their advice, which means commencing work on the second draft on Monday, October 26th. It's going to be difficult to hold off that long, like waiting for Christmas, but it makes sense to me and I'm determined to try.

So now what?

The workers in the dream factory have been producing widgets on time and under budget for quite a while, and now the factory has closed suddenly so the owner can retool the assembly line for a new model. The problem is that the factory owner has no clue what the new model will be and until he gets a clue, the workers have nothing to do.

First I'm going to take a couple of days off to read, think, cut the grass and my hair and generally just get away from myself, my muse and my imaginary friends for a little while. For the last few weeks especially, I've been fairly obsessed with my project, and I've been living more with Tony and Daphne than I have with Hank and Teri. They've become almost real to me as I've written this, and I hope that when I read through the book again late next month they'll seem half as real on the printed page.

I've got some ideas floating around in my brain, but right now I'm watching the wheels spin on the creative slot machine and hoping for the right combination to fall into place.