Once Again I Have Finished the Novel.

Finished it! For the third time this summer, I dotted the last i and crossed the last t and called it done.

Yeah, right.

It’s almost done. It’s 8,000 words longer than it was the last time I called it finished. It’s already the best fiction I have ever written, but beta reader feedback (though it’s trickling off) hasn’t stopped coming in.

But for the moment, if I call it done, I can look around at the thousand-and-one other things I’ve been neglecting. The flower beds are choked with weeds. The grapevine is pulling down the back fence. The floor crunches. The bathtub is gross. There’s a stack of paperwork eight inches thick waiting to be sorted and filed. I’ve submitted maybe two short stories in the last year. And my last blog entry/newsletter? June 24 of this year. But the one before that was June 25 of the previous year.

It’s like I have the opposite of writer’s block with this novel. I can’t put it down. I keep rereading it and rereading it, tightening and tweaking. It’s like having a piece of Silly Putty and just kneading it constantly because… because… because it’s there.

Yes, the product keeps getting better. The chapter that I wrote last weekend sucked, and then 24 hours later it sucked less, and the day after that it was pretty good. It’s still not the best chapter in the book, but that’s a high bar. The rest of the book is (dare I say it?) neigh unto masterful.

So what do I do, now that I’ve shut the laptop?

Open it again. Write a query letter. Write a synopsis.

Sigh.

---

Image credits:

Clip art from magnific.com

Photo by Cat Chapin-Bishop