I seem to have this problem. I'll get to work on a story, writing every night, work very hard, finally get to the end, and get this great feeling of accomplishment, and then for weeks after, I just don't want to do anything else.
When I actually to get to it, and have a viable idea, then I have no problem doing the work, I enjoy it. I'll do it no matter how tired or distracted or distressed I get. But when I'm finished, I just don't want to go back and start again... I begin to want to focus on other things and people in my life. This slump of creativeness will go on until the next little piece that makes and old idea work fits into my head and I'm ready to go again...
Any comments? Is this kind of normal?
So yeah I think a lot of writers get that lull after he storm of creativity. As long as you finish and go back at sometime I wouldn’t sweat it.
Shawn
First of all, there are those who have compared creativity to bipolar disorders in that when you are "on a roll" you are in a state similar to the manic state of a bipolar disorder. Of course rolls can't last, and just as bipolar disorders have depressed states, creative people have to have "down time."
So it isn't all that uncommon in creativity.
Second, consider your creativity source as something similar to a reservoir. When you write, you are drawing on the contents of that reservoir. If you don't take time between writing bouts to "have a life" in order to refill the reservoir, you run the risk of totally draining it.
Lawrence Block pointed out (in an article several years ago for WRITER'S DIGEST) that writers tend to be quite fickle with regard to the things they're interested in, and he suggested that this was because they had to be filling up that reservoir with all kinds of different things all the time.
After writing feverishly, it's okay to take some down time to fill up the reservoir.
But it's also okay to be the kind of writer who can't stand down time, who has to work on Something! all the time. Such writers probably have more than one reservoir and they move among them.
Another case where there is no One Right Way to Write.
What works for you isn't wrong, it's what works for you.
That isn't to say you can't train yourself to work differently if you want to. Just don't stress yourself out about it if you do it one way and another writer does it another way.