When You Say Goodbye to Your Manuscript

On Monday morning, I uploaded my manuscript and sent it off to my new editor.  I was both excited and sad.

I really love this manuscript, and I think it has good potential.  I've been working very hard on it, writing seven days a week to ready it for her, so she can work her editor magic and make it into the kind of book my agent will say is ready to Show. Some. People.

I had been looking forward to some time off. I pictured myself catching up on my tv shows, napping maybe, cleaning some stuff that has't been cleaned in a while. (Okay, I really don't want to clean anything.) But also reading a lot more -- something that I love and which has had to take a back seat lately to getting my manuscript done -- and catching up with friends.

But then I clicked that Send button.  And I felt adrift.

I miss my characters. I miss Hannah, a smart, unsure of herself twelve year old who is completely confused by her almost-teenage life, and her big brother Aaron who is applying to college, knowing he's not going to be able to attend, and their father, Mark, a bumbling but lovable Rabbi, left devastated by the loss of his wife, with no clue how to raise the kids himself.

So I'm not exactly enjoying this forced upon me free time as I thought I would.  And I find this happens every time I write a new book. I start imagining the free time, the break, the much needed release from living the story in my head every day.  And then I get there and it's, well, not anything like I thought it would be.

My editor will be done in about three weeks, and then I'll get it back again. I'll get cranky as the time grows near, I'm sure, thinking about all of the work I have to do on it, worrying that I won't be able to make the changes she suggests, wondering if I really can take it to the next level.  And as soon as I get it back, as relieved as I will be to have it in my hands again, to write, I will wonder why I didn't appreciate my break more.