One thing nobody ever thinks about is the importance of a break. This is especially important if you're a largely one-man band (don't worry, I do have an editor and won't be doing the artwork myself). If you have the time, it's a good idea to sit on your drafts after a couple edits so that you can go back to it with fresh eyes. Otherwise your tired, bored and cynical eyes will glaze over the text and you won't catch out all those glaring issues and annoying writing patterns.
So right now I'm taking a break from it and will do so for another four weeks while I turn my attention to a couple other projects, namely a Vampire LARP I'm prepping for which will be very occult mystery focused with hopefully enough politics to give me the occasional lazy night where all I have to do is twiddle my thumbs, eavesdrop and adjudicate the occasional die roll.
Thus, since part of a good rest period is turning your mind away from your project, I will be talking about other things. Probably random horror advice and more cool links. We haven't had nearly enough of those!
Yeah, I've burned out on projects a few times that way, especially if other stuff comes up at the same time to overwhelm you. And sometimes stuff that seems perfectly intuitive after working on it non-stop turns out to be incoherent when you turn a fresh eye to it, because you're not mentally filling in the gaps or adjusting the bits you *meant* to adjust.
ReplyDeleteAnd sometimes you adjust the adjustments which were adjusted to adjust the adjustments and what was a perfectly fine sentence now makes no sense.
DeleteYeah, prettty much.
DeleteI keep meaning to go back to that Cthulhu school scenario I abandoned, and at least pull out the setting material into something useable by mortals. Seems a shame to waste all that work.
You have time, at least.
Delete