The strange silence after writing a book

Where did all the words go?

I sat at the kitchen table, as usual, and opened my laptop. This had been my morning routine for months. Finishing Fireside Magic didn’t have to change that.

But something felt different, disquieting — like the eerie, muffled silence of dawn snowfall. I got up. Filled a hot water bottle. Refilled my water glass. I proceeded to wander through the flat, tending the houseplants and tucking in bedcovers that were already perfectly straight.

Then I returned to the kitchen, to the open laptop and the blank page. Disquiet reigned. In my heart, I’d known why all along — there weren’t any words waiting for me.

Half an hour later the kirk bells clanged across the road. I still hadn’t thought of anything to write about. An uncanny emptiness ettled at me, an emptiness I recognised as the space a book had left behind. The need to write lingered, but what was there left to say?

My book writing process is akin to clearing out an attic, you see. A cramped, gloomy attic, sprawling with junk and hidden treasure (often indistinguishable from one another due to decades of grime). Moonlight glimmers through a narrow window curtained by cobwebs, soft as velvet, and white sheets drape like swooning ghosts over stacks of eerily familiar furniture.

I lock the door upon myself and haunt its shadows. There are musty trunks to crack open, and objects to be examined by the silver light. It is always dusk outside the narrow window, its glass wiped clean to let the moonbeams through. They cast an iridescent glamour over the forgotten things dragged from the trunk. In this shimmering guise, they can be taken into the house below (though if you squint you can sometimes see the shadow of ‘before’ lurking underneath).  

After emptying the trunks dust sheets are thoroughly shaken, and the floor swept free of stoory spider skins. It feels spacious, at first. Liberating. Abandoned corners, once thick with dust, possess the clean, mysterious air of a sanctuary.

For the first time sunlight pierces the dingy attic, warming my skin. Yet a strange restlessness ripples through me. What next? What now?  whisper the anxious little voices within. Their concerns echo around the hollowed-out chamber but go unanswered.

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I’ve experienced this strange after-book silence twice before. First when I finished my novel, and again after writing Fireside Fairy Tales. On both occasions, I remember attempting a sequel immediately. Now that everything had been neatly tidied up, surely I could begin with a clear head?

But I couldn’t find the words. Or more accurately, I couldn’t find the feelings.

Fireside Magic had many false starts. Every story I tried felt flat and heartless. My attic cleaning spree put things in order, but had I been too quick to throw some of the ‘junk’ away?

Of course, as with most cleaning sprees, the dust slowly gathers again. Bit by bit you stow memories away until your attic is perhaps fuller than before.

I didn’t know this at the time, however, and despaired at every abandoned story. I didn’t know that before I could begin that book I had to live for a time in the spaciousness I’d just created.

Now I’m in that wide-open space again, catching my breath after another purge. It’s a necessary pause after the intensity of writing a book. Novel writing is a joyful experience as I wrote in my last post, but if you feel deeply (as I think most writers do) then you’ll likely find your creative well depleted by the journey’s end.

Ugly things are kept in attics, like Dorian Gray’s portrait. But there’s beauty too; bittersweet gifts and memories that belong to a time in your life that’s gone and will never come again. And I always find it strange how what we wish to keep and what we wish to forget often end up in the same place.

Now that Fireside Magic is complete*, I will give myself more time. More time to stand peacefully in the light-filled attic, or to go about my day in the house below unencumbered. By the time I ascend the stairs again, the moon will be a sliver behind the filmy windowpane, the spiders and cobwebs will have returned, and there will be another shadowy hoard to sift through.

Only then will it be time for another clear out, another book.

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*I’m setting a tentative release of November 2022 for ‘Fireside Magic’ ~ I feel really excited to share these stories of magic, folk belief, and witchcraft with you!