Shakes

Seven hundred and eleven pages.

One hundred ninety-four thousand, six hundred and forty-two words.

This morning I hand wrote fifteen pages over the course of two hours. I usually write ten pages over the course of a day, but today I felt like if I didn’t finish this draft I never would. I didn’t write at all for two days. I had only four scenes left to write and I just couldn’t seem to sit down and write them. I had all sorts of excuses: work, music, interesting books to read, addictive anime shows to watch. But in the back of mind I had those four scenes running over and over and over and my mood the last few days has gotten worse and worse.

So I got up this morning and I sat down and I wrote. I didn’t eat breakfast. I poured myself a cup of coffee, I fed the dogs and I put pen to paper and finished the draft. It’s done. 711 pages. 194,642 words.

Now I can’t stop shaking. My brain’s gone numb. I had to drive to my grandparent’s house to get my computer so I could type up those last fifteen pages and I had the hardest time focusing on driving.

The words, Now What? keeping circling around my brain like sea gulls over a fishing pier.

Of course, I know what happens next. Now, I do another draft. Now I sit down and do research. Now I start brainstorming my next story. There’s so much more to do now. But I feel oddly empty. Like I’ve just purged some huge weight. This draft is nowhere near a final draft, but it’s the closest I’ve come. It actually contains a semblance of a plot. This draft actually reads like a book.

Thank you for reading.