I've taken a week off to celebrate completion and provide myself with a little distance from the writing. That means a lazy period with lots of gooey Australian licorice, an intense bout of Half-Life 2, blogging and reading.
What's next?
Today I'll start draft three of Black Poplar. I've received excellent feedback on the novel and will begin to make changes. Mostly, my focus will be tightening up the ending. I expect this process to take no more than a week.
Then I'm going to do two things:
First, spend some time writing up thoughts for a standalone novel. This shouldn't take too long as it's largely going to serve as a starter/home for work going forward.
Second, I'm going to begin the outline for the follow up novel to Black Poplar (working title - 'Black Dog'). Last time, this process took me about three months. Given the foundations I have to work with and how much I've learned about the process, I expect to have a good working outline by October 1st.
The challenges: avoid depression as rejection letters start to arrive, avoid online distraction (just bought Psychonauts via Steam last night. Oh boy!), stave off desire to spend a month chewing through my waist high stack of reading material (I just got an advance copy of Matt Ruff's Bad Monkeys - how have I missed this guy?).