You people who always have three different book ideas on the go – the ones who have notebooks filled with plots that are straining at the leash and who never seem to be without something to work on – I envy you. I know you sometimes probably have more things to work on than you can cope with, but I bet you never have to suffer the between projects moment.

I mean, that moment when you realise the thing you’ve been working on for years is at a point where you’ve either finished it or you need to let it rest. The moment when you find yourself casting around for something to fill all the time you’ve been sinking into the same imaginary world for ages, when you look for the next big thing to keep yourself busy – and find there’s nothing there.

Not nothing. There are plenty of things there. It’s just you haven’t got a hold of any of them yet. You’re warily walking round the side of them, kicking the edges and wondering whether there’s enough in this idea to sustain you through a whole book. And it’s hard to know which one looks great on the outside but doesn’t have the guts you need or which crappy exterior is actually going to open up some amazing characters for you.

So you’re wandering around in a funk, trying to work out what you’re doing and remember who you were before you started the last big project. Reminding yourself that you felt pretty crappy then too, the last time this happened, and that somehow, you got over it then and you’ll definitely get over this between projects moment too.