Examining the Post-Manuscript Crash

Feeling the blues after completing a book manuscript is a thing

I completed a 71,000-word book manuscript last week and fired it off to my agent. Now? I’m sad. I decided to write this short piece as a sort of psychological observation note on the public bulletin board that is the internet. I, and I think many other writers, experience depression after completing a book manuscript. So here we are, me flipping over a rotten log to take a look at the creepy squirming insects.

One of my shots of an Alaskan glacier calving to illustrate the post manuscript “crash”.

“Completed” may be the wrong term. Everyone in the biz knows that writing a book manuscript is an early step on the long trek to publication. But manuscript completion is a notable milestone that signifies the critical moment when a story exits the realm of one person’s dreams to enter the physical world and scrutiny of others. Ethereal becomes corporeal. What were private thoughts are now words any literate person can access. What was entirely mine is no longer. Even if the manuscript sucks or is unloved and doesn’t progress, it does exist. That I willed something to exist from nothing, not even from material like an engineer might, is still a concept I can’t quite grasp. How is it we apes can do this!? Awesome. I’m compelled toward religious thoughts.

I think most people believe that writing the manuscript is the work and the finishing of said manuscript the reward. I certainly thought this was the case. But I’ve found that the writing is actually the fun part, full of euphoric swells and a driving sense of life purpose. For me, diving into a new manuscript is a welcome intrusion of elemental magic to the banality of mortal existence. Frankly, it’s a real gas. I will happily spend a whole day in the same boxer-briefs typing away and drinking too much coffee. Those creative swells in the wee hours of the night, ideally fueled with a moderate but consistent input of tequila, are so mysterious and wonderful that I—a professional word guy—will not even attempt to describe them out of a sense of respect to the sacred. Bukowski did a good job in his poem Roll the Dice when he references nights with flame and the gods:

“…If you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the
gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.
you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter,
it’s the only good fight
there is.”