You may remember that on September 30, 2014, I finished the first draft of my second novel (working title: The Water Bearers). Ahh, such a production—a champagne toast, a video post. I even added a doomsday clock to my homepage to make sure that I met my self-imposed deadline.

And what have you heard about this much-vaunted book since then?

[crickets chirping]

That’s right, not a single damned thing. I’m truly sorry if you’re disappointed by the apparent lack of any further activity on my part, but this period of “inactivity” after completing a first draft is not only a normal part of the writing adventure, it’s also a healthy part of it.

Do you bake? I don’t, except for The World’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookies. (I didn’t invent the title; I just wear the crown). But even I know that bread dough has to rest for a while before you bake it (Thank you to The King—Stephen, that is—for this metaphor). A manuscript is no different—it needs a period of rest, just as King Stephen says in his wonderful cookbook, On Writing:

You’ve done a lot of work and you need a period of time (how much or how little depends on the individual writer) to rest…How long you let your book rest—sort of like bread dough between kneadings—is entirely up to you, but I think it should be a minimum of six weeks…With six weeks’ worth of recuperation time, you’ll…be able to see any glaring holes in the plot or character development.

Who am I to buck royal advice? I’ve been doing exactly what Stephen King recommended: getting involved in new projects and re-involved in my day-to-day life, completely and utterly ignoring the completed manuscript waiting patiently on my desktop. Not just because The King says so, but also because I worked hard on it; it deserves to have me return to it with a fresh and ready mind; and because the next phase, editing, will be ugly (for me, it usually involves sharp objects, cursing, and tears, though I do try to keep bloodshed to an absolute minimum).

So—King’s prescribed minimum of six weeks, if we count from September 30, would have me resuming work on The Water Bearers around November 11. Will that be the day? Perhaps—or perhaps I will extend my hiatus to seven, or even eight weeks. The important thing is not, at least at this stage, to assign a random date on the calendar, but rather to know, in your writerly heart, that it’s time. How do you that? Well, it’s your lucky day, because The King’s got an answer for that question, too:

If it [your manuscript] looks like an alien relic bought at a junk-shop or yard sale where you can hardly remember stopping, you’re ready…If you’ve never done it before, you’ll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience…it will also be like reading the work of someone else…This is the way it should be, the reason you waited. It’s always easier to kill someone else’s darlings than it is to kill your own. 

Okay, that whole alien relic bit may be a tricky visual for most of us to replicate, with today’s ubiquitous digital versions (unless you wrote it on one of these), but King’s message is pretty clear: You have to allow yourself enough time away that you not only fall in love with your manuscript all over again, but also feel enough distance between you that you can go on and destroy that which needs destroying–a crazy balancing act virtually impossible to achieve in the rosy afterglow of initial completion.

So—if it seems as though there’s been a whole lot of nuthin’ going on since I wrote “The End,” never fear: There’s been a whole lot of proofing going on, and it’s not quite done yet. But don’t worry—when the time is right and I finally break out the power tools and get back to work, you’ll be the first to know.

Disclaimer: That psychedelic cat above? Don’t you believe a word he says, he’s a Bad Kitty. Go right ahead and keep asking me–I like it.