Disclaimer: I realize what follows is not important in the grand scheme of things, or even in the small scheme. I'm lucky to have this little molehill of a problem, but this is a writer's blog after all, and we have a tendency to conflate and make mountains out of this tiniest little ideas. 
So it's been a week since I finished the first draft of my second novel and, if I'm being truthful, not an entirely wonderful one. I know how ridiculous this sounds. "Waa. I finished my work. I accomplished my goal." But I feel like this is a part of the process that not many people talk about because they feel like whiners in mentioning it. I will now commence whining. 
The rush of finishing the first draft lasted maybe 36 hours. And then I started to wonder if it was all just terrible schlock. And what was I even trying to say? And is this even original? And will anyone care? On and on and on until I couldn't stand the snarky tone of my own thoughts, and the only remedy, to read it from start to finish and check, was  something I told myself I wasn't going to do right away.
I promised myself a proper break from the book--three weeks to a month of not looking at it--so that I can feel separate from it again before I get back to work. I am finding this self-imposed hiatus incredibly difficult to stick to. I want to read it, to know what's there and if some of it is good. I want to start tinkering and rewriting to fix what isn't. 
I didn't give myself a break the last time I wrote a first draft of a novel and it had some deleterious results. I spent the next five years in a rewrite maze, trapped and completely lost, like Jennifer Connelly in that stairs scene in Labyrinth. So I know I need the overview, the pan-out, but I also feel addicted to telling the story, Everyone who knows me knows that I am pretty straight-edge, but I feel like I kind of know what withdrawal might be like now. 
I'm trying, during this forced break, to take a look at some short stories I wrote that need polishing, to catch up on some seriously good books I missed out on while I was writing, to flesh out a few new thoughts that might become stories or poems. It's a distraction, sure, but I would be lying to say these things are satisfying me. The writing I poured so much of myself into for the past eight months is up on a shelf, and after that amount of energy and time and brain power and emotion put into it, I can't help but feel like the best part of me is away on the shelf too.
Blah. I know it will pass, but right now I am feeling these post-first-draft blues.

I have no brain for reflection right now, so this is just a quick post to mark this eventful day. Draft 1 of novel 2 done! Excuse me while I WOO! (Let's not think right now, about all the revision ahead of me.)
Funny thing:, I was so close to finishing it as I sat across from one of my favourite people (also a writer, Emily Saso) and then we could have high-fived and looked around at all the other people toiling away at their coffee shop-cum-offices and been very smug indeed. But alas I did not write fast enough and so I finished it at home alone twenty-five minutes later. Because writing is a solitary task, it's hard to know what to do when that final sentence is written. For sure I typed that final period with gusto. And then, because I felt like busting a move, I made myself this eclectic dancey playlist. And if nothing ever comes of this book, at least you've got a few kickin' jams out of the deal.
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Let's get this out of the way right off: If you came here with the hope of finding a tidbit about how to power through and finish your work in seventy-two hours or three weeks or some other arbitrary set amount of time, I apologize. I have zero helpful advice about how to finish anything on a deadline. But If you are like me and have an open-ended schedule and about 1500 blocks of time no longer than half an hour each, I will let you in on a secret. You can still write a novel.
Take this for example: for the past three months or so, I've been lugging my laptop with me to my oldest daughter's early morning folk dance practices. I sit in a chair outside the gym and listen to the Maple Leaf Stomp and get down as many words as that half hour practice allows. I try not to worry too much about whether they are going to be good words because time is limited and if I did, that would be at least 27 minutes of my time gone. Sometimes I manage seventy-five words, and sometimes Miriam Makeba comes on singing Pata Pata and I write almost 500 words and at least half of them aren't garbage! That happened this morning and when I looked around wanting to high-five someone, there was no kid willing to indulge the crazy writer lady.
So, yeah, it's not a perfect scenario, by any means. You will probably not have any momentum to carry you along, so every time you sit down to work, you really will have to force yourself. But it is possible to make progress this way, it just takes a little (okay, a lot) longer. Anyway, this is all to say that this bits and bites first draft writing process is nearing completion, so if you see me out in some random situation with my laptop (riding the bus, or out on the playground with the kids after school, or waiting in the doctor's office) and I raise my hand, it means I am done (!!) and for god's sake, don't leave me hanging!