I had about a day to myself after finishing the first draft of the novella before getting into a new sequence on a comics series and completing the generation of a new comics series. Finishing a big piece of work leaves me dazed and empty, but the clock doesn’t stop ticking. Switching to comics scripting accessed a different part of my brain, a lump that still had juice in it. Now I’m dry. Have been for a couple of days. Still working, of course: roughing scenes out, dealing with things like kicking around cover ideas, looking over a tv script that needs a rewrite, bits and pieces. But the days just wander, now, and my mind wanders with it. I want to be doing anything but composing words on a screen.

But this is a sickness. And what’s actually happening is that my non-fiction book is finally starting to build itself in the back of my head, and the pillars of it are beginning to cause pressure inside the top of my skull. This isn’t right. I just want to sleep, and read, and think. But the sickness burns up everything around it.

 

Reading: THE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE STEPS, Michel Faber (UK) (US)