It's been about three months since I finished a rough draft of my novel. I briefly felt accomplished and put it away while I worked on other writing. I am a short story writer and essayist by trade, you could say. All my friends were writing novels. Oh, how I give to fit in. But really, I want to publish my novel. I probably want to publish a few because I had fun with the one I just wrote. Plus, everyone who's publishing in the big magazines and journals has books in there bios. And the prizes you can get from a novel pay a hell of a lot more than the short stuff prizes. I'm talking Pulitzers and Pushcarts. Anyway, I've given my novel a lot of thought since finishing it. I made it up as I was going. It actually went in a slightly different direction than I thought. It's a mystery of sorts and I surprised myself with the ending. I did quite a bit of editing and revision along the way. It's just now that I know how it ends I want to go back and add some clues, sort of beef up the investigation. Maybe even throw in another twist somewhere. I did write a synopsis for it because I was supposed to email it to someone. I just wasn't ready for any kind of help right now. My draft is super rough and I know that. I would love to hear from some of you how long you step away from your novel. What's a good break when you know there's going to be so much work to do? Last time I wrote a novel I never wrote a second draft. It was never published. I don't want to shoot myself in the foot again. Novels are hard. I have no idea how many draft I'll need. I just want to make this one work. I'm freaking out a little even about opening the file. So, now I don't know if I'm taking a necessary break from such a large project or I'm just procrastinating. How do you know the difference?
Sometimes it's a week, a month, sometimes it's an afternoon because what I actually needed was to let myself off the hook and have a lazy day. I've definitely been in the same situation. I think you just need to trust yourself and your own intuition re: procrastination. I take breaks because deep down, I know I need them, and deep down, I know it's not procrastination, no matter what some writers might say about not writing every day. There's something to be said for letting the ink well refill!
Ok i finally have time to respond to this lol (though what i do is probably the wrong thing). When i finished my first draft, i was so excited and wanted to just jump in and do edits/rewrites. But i forced myself to take like a 2-3 month break from it. During the edits, i took a lot of breaks because, as you said, its super hard. I found myself getting stuck more often so id take breaks... The longest was probably 2 weeks before i looked at it again. Reading the comments was more nerve-racking and intimidating for me than anything. I found myself not wanting to open the document and read the comments... So i procrastinated that.... But once i got into the editing and addressing the comments, it got better (though there were a few comments that made me slap my forehead and shut my computer with embarrassment)
Making a list of comments/points that you've got to edit is a great idea! Reminds me of writing my dissertation. I'm literally going to start doing this - so much easier, because it's just a case of working through the list!!
