The question that never goes away...
"What next?"
The audience has gone home. The stage is empty. There is a certain stillness in the air.
And yet there’s anticipation too.
Once or twice a year I reach a point on my writing journey which the image above seems to capture perfectly: those times when I have finished work on ‘live’ projects and thus — to lean into the metaphor — they have pretty much abandoned the stage. When that happens, I find myself wanting a new project, another reason to be back in front of an audience again. And for ‘audience’ substitute ‘readership’ — though in that context, the number of chairs in the photo seems highly appropriate!
So what has just finished ‘strutting its stuff’?
A collection of poems, Less, which is published on 1st April — and may be my last such work — and a new version of my 2012 magic realism novel, The Big Frog Theory, due out on 19th April. (Please check-out the links.)
Of course the landscape isn’t entirely bare; it rarely is. Waiting in one of the wings is the first draft of a new novel to which I will be returning very soon — however this requires more than a few rounds of editing given that I’m convinced the narrative is far from ‘complete’.
And also just out of shot (perhaps on the opposite side of the stage) are a growing number of short stories (one to be published next month in The Bournemouth Journal) which are likely to make it into a collection, probably in 2026. But for now, adding further stories is merely background activity.
I recognise that for many people (the majority?) these two projects would be sufficient to fuel the fire (and especially so since I’ll also be working on editing a couple of poetry collections for people I know). However I always seem to need at least three projects on the go at any one time. I can’t help myself. Addiction can do that to you, can’t it?
And if I do decide to abandon writing poetry (either temporarily or permanently) —
— that would leave me with a clear option: another novel. But what?
This is a dance with which I’m all too familiar; I know all the moves! Indeed I have previously shared this angst in these pages. And guess what: some of the options I had back then — examined and discarded — will probably make yet another appearance for reconsideration (and, most likely, rejection).
And that’s fine. I know how this game is played. When the music starts, my feet begin to tap…
How do you handle the “what next?” question? Is there some magic trick that works for you?
