My Novel is Finished!

Let me tell you about the day I finished my novel. It was a terrible day, horrible, no good. At least, it sure started out that way.

My plan was to be all kick-butt and ride my bike five miles to my favorite coffee shop (The Mill @ Telegraph, for any Lincolnites reading) and write my heart out.

But then, half a mile or so from home, pop! goes my back tire. So I trudge back home. Sweaty now and irritated but thinking: okay, whatever, at least I wasn’t a whole mile away from home when it happened, or two or three or all five.

I get back home. I take the keys out of my backpack.

Scratch that. I take my keyring out of my backpack. It has a whole lot of things on it—bottle opener, a bundle of keycards, a few key chains—but not a one of these things is a key to my house. We’d passed the keys off to friends who were watching our house while we were away, and apparently I hadn’t put them back on the ring yet.

I am locked out. It’s getting hotter by the minute, my only form of transportation is caput, and I am locked out.

Cue the terrible horrible no good very bad (and a whole lot of less kid-friendly negatives).

Cue a contrite call to my husband. I reach him just as he’s walking into his building after a twenty-minute commute and ten-minute walk from the campus parking lot, and he doesn’t curse my name (out loud, anyway), which is how I know I made the right decision in marrying him six years ago. 

He probably has some no good very bad expletives on his return walk to the car. But, with what I imagine requires significant effort, Josh puts on a happy face and comes to bail me out—not only of my unfortunate situation but also of my now pretty sour attitude.

(If you like morals in your stories, your takeaway here is: have people in your life who will wear the good mood pants when you spill on yours).

So, anyways. My morning is half wasted, and I’m already chalking the day up as a loss, but eventually I do get to the coffee shop. I write for a while, and then I come home. And then I write for a while more, all afternoon, really, with a dogged sort of focus, and I chisel out the words that have been eluding me for weeks.

The last pages, and then the last words, of the last chapter.

And I finish my novel. On the most very bad of days.

(Or, to slip in one more children’s book reference: The Worst Best Day Ever. Who knows this one?)

I had envisioned this moment—the typing of my novel’s last word and final period—with celebratory fanfare, popping champagne, maybe doing some cartwheels without breaking myself (that’s how you know it’s unrealistic). 

I started this thing four-and-a-half years ago, in my last semester of grad school, with a vague idea and class-school imposed deadlines to get stuff on paper. I started and restarted I don’t even know how many times, and straight up forgot about it for months at a time. And I still vividly remember the agony I felt weeks ago, so close to the finish line and yet certain that I would never get there. 

And now, all of a sudden, here I am. 

I’m think I’m still waiting for it to sink in.