Several days ago, I finished my latest novel, I, Jack—My Interview with Jack the Ripper. It was roughly six months of research and nine in the writing. The subject matter, brutal. The emotional cost, dear.
Through several seasons, I gathered knowledge, formulated the story arc, and weaved together the living and the dead to take the reader “there.”
The image above is how I, Jack, ends, Victorian framed and all.
Like all my manuscripts that came before, I alone saw the end appear, and was the first to experience that end. No more scene cards to flip. No more factoids to add. No more research needed. No more late-night epiphanies. No more interrupted showers. And no more Jack the Ripper at my throat.
And with The End came the same reaction and in this order.
Emptiness.
Sadness.
Relief.
Quiet satisfaction.
No desire to party, to throw confetti in my face, or pop a champagne cork.
Tiredness, mental exhaustion overtook. My mind went blank.
~~~
So, it took you forever, didn’t it? To reach your “The End.” Maybe months, maybe years, heck, maybe decades. But that mother is done. You typed those two words. You printed it out just to feel the ream of paper between your tired fingers, to appreciate the weight — literal and figurative — and with no one around but you on this momentous occasion, you smiled a Mona Lisa smile.
You’re positive your next step will be you running out into the street, screaming at the top of your lungs, “I have changed the world with my words! They are here! Look, see! The earth’s axis has been righted. Let’s party like it’s 2025!”
That’s the fantasy.
One of many that will flow out of a writer when their tale ends, when the toil and the torment and the umpteen rewrites have been rewritten, when you have reached the peak of Mount Author. Relish the view, smell the crisp, clear, oh, so smarty-pants air!
The reality, far different my key-pounder friend.
Yes, every wordsmith writes differently, so they will react differently, too. But what you thought would be an ebullient fountain of joy and much celebration often melts into a kind of emptiness, a grieving process, a loss. Yes, quiet satisfaction, too, of course. But like a new mother, post-partum depression can rear up and take you by surprise.
Until typing The End, you knew who you were—a struggling writer with an unfolding glittering tale. Family and friends demanded updates on your progress. You would vent back to all your struggles and your wins, and shout from the rafters that you will never give up the fight. No way, no how! And your world cheered you on…
Until there was no more need for that support.
The tale is told. The fighting done. You won not umpteen battles but the whole damn war.
And with any victorious general back from the theater, you arrive home high on the accolades but bereft of purpose.
And as the days wear on, the pressure mounts. Soon, someone in your circle will utter those mind-bending, soul-crushing words, “So, what’s next?”
So, yes, right now, you will plunk down in your writer’s chair, carefully place that paper ream on your desk, and stare at it until the sun sets and the darkness overtakes because you didn’t have the umpf to turn on a light.
You lean back in your chair. You notice for the first time that it creaks. Your senses reignite. You’re no longer living in your story’s fantasy bubble. A chill comes over you. You crave a sweater or a hot chocolate or a double scotch on the rocks.
Emptiness. Relief. A quiet longing for the fight.
It’s the quiet satisfaction that gets you out of that chair and down the hall to greet your family, call your friends, and come back to earth where the normal people live.
Yes, pride in the form of a Mona Lisa smile soon colors your face.
You can’t seem to sit in any chair right now without leaning back; the laurel wreaths around your neck, they are so fragrant but strangely heavy.
You will sleep tonight. Your mattress will seem softer, more forgiving, less need for the toss and turn.
But a second quilt will be needed. Your brain isn’t filled with ideas or questions to be investigated or answered. Your synapses on pause, and they feel the chill.
In the morning, you will wake up a different person. Overnight, you have gone from exhausted writer to learned author. The manuscript, you soon realize, though, has yet to become a book. There are steps — formatting, graphics, a launch plan. And you do it all or you hire. And the manuscript, like a caterpillar soon leaves its chrysalis and becomes a beautiful butterfly, a real book that, like the paper ream, you can hold it in your hands and feel its weight.
But the emptiness and the ache for yesterday remain.
And like the writer you are, you only know one fix.
To pen another work. To craft the plot, give birth to the characters, and open a door to another arduous round of prosaic toil and torment.
That is the reality, dear author.
The struggle, the fulfillment, and the emptiness from the finished product never end.
And it’s in that ceaseless war you graduate to the “knowing.”
A job well done.
You have joined the silent sufferers club.
What are you doing wasting time reading this post? Get to work. Those words won’t type themselves. 😉
