Wow. It's finished. I finally finished the first draft of my novel. And what's more, I really like it. It's not ready for prime time, far from it, but it's really, for real, done as far as the story goes. I doubt I'll send it off for at least another year, but I'm not worried about that. I can set aside the burden of writing my first story. Revising will have its own problems but the main thing is, I'm free. I can write other stories now and not feel guilty about it. There have been many times in the past year or so when I'd write two or three pages on a new story and then stop and set them aside. I promised myself that I would not throw my efforts into another story until I had finished the first draft of this one. And now I have. It's done. It needs work (a lot of work) but my first draft is complete. Thanks to all of you who encouraged me to keep working on it.
In case you are wondering, it ended up being 144,618 words spanning 414 pages.
