The Achievement Hangover

Whenever I’ve finished writing a book, I’ve always found myself slipping into a bit of a depression. I used to call it the “creativity hangover.” When you pour so much of yourself into working on a project and invest so much energy into its completion, it’s only natural to feel a little let down when it’s over.

While pondering the source of the writer’s block that plagued me while working on Devil in Exile, I came up with a metric crapton of working theories, ranging from it was a dumb idea in the first place to I wasn’t actually a real writer and the first five books were a fluke. What can I say? Battling a three-year bout of writer’s block has a way of fucking with your confidence and self-esteem.

The funny thing is that I was writing. I just wasn’t writing as much as I needed to in the book I was supposed to be finishing. Also, and let’s be real here, as cool as it is to know that the copy I write for my day job gets read by tens of thousands of people every day, those are not the words that I wish tens of thousands of people were reading.

Now that I’m back to work and dusting off the discipline of daily writing, I have a new theory about why I couldn’t bring myself to finish Devil in Exile: Finishing that book meant that I was finished with Clementine Toledano.

You see, I started working on the seventh and final book for the Clementine Toledano Mysteries way back when Chasing Those Devil Bones was kicking my creative ass. And Gods and Devils has just been sitting there on my hard drive, largely done, all these years. Don’t get me wrong, it needed a lot of work and some massive rewrites… also, apparently, I used to have a character named Frank who was supposed to turn into someone important to Q and who I brutally deleted at some point?? But I digress.

So, finishing the sixth book–the bridge that would lead from Q’s untimely departure from New Orleans in Until the Devil Weeps to her return in Gods and Devils–would mean that the series was essentially finished. And if finishing a book gave me a hangover, I didn’t want to face the brutality that would await me after the series was done. And finishing Devil in Exile has been the problem all along. I couldn’t write the ending. Which was a new one for me. I usually write the ending first and then tear my hair out for a good six to eight weeks trying to get the second act to go where it needs to go.

The upside of just about every character in Devil in Exile being the murderer at one point in time or another is that my thirty-fifth or so version of it has turned into quite a clever who-done-it if I do say so myself. But it wasn’t a fun one to write, not in the least.

As I struggled with the ending of Devil in Exile, I struggled with a few endings and new beginnings of my own in my personal life. And I’ve realized that hangover of mine wasn’t caused as much by an expense of creativity but by achievement instead.

The achievement hangover. That’s a beast. Because when you’re embarking on a journey that will be difficult, you have to keep your eyes on the reward at the end, the reason you're making that journey in the first place. You have to keep that picture in your brain and hold onto it when you have those moments of doubt.

And when you have a good imagination, that picture can look pretty fucking amazing. Here was mine: First Born and me in a cozy house that was mine with art on all the walls and an explosion of plants on the patio; a sweet little dog that we adored; a day job I enjoyed; a little money in the bank; a healthy relationship with a supportive partner; and, most importantly, a First Born who wasn’t traumatized by the journey he hadn’t asked to ride along for.

Somewhere along the way, I woke up and realized that, by and large, the picture I’d been holding in my brain for so long was the reality that I woke up to every morning; which inevitably leads to the dreaded “Now what?” and that’s exactly when the achievement hangover kicks in.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you already know, that I am not one to sit down and enjoy my successes. In fact, I’ve spent a good deal of my life minimizing them as I kept looking for bigger and higher mountains to climb. This realization was the impetus that jump-started my brain and blew up that block of mine.

Now what?

Now, we write.

It’s almost impossible to work on a dream when your personal life is in shambles. Depression and angst will only get you so far. That’s why so many follow-up records to brilliant first albums suck so bad. That’s where the real work begins.

I realize now that I had to build this safe home base in order to do the real work. Metaphorically, the Clementine Toledano Mysteries were my just first album. The one where I honed my skills and proved to myself that I could be a writer. And this next project scares the crap out of me. That’s how I know it’s good. That’s how I know that this is the Now What. And for me, identifying the next mountain I’m going to climb is the only cure for that achievement hangover. And guess what? I feel just fine.