I am finished.
I had planned to finish before the start of the year, but my calculations were off by eleven days.
I wonder if other writers get a kind of postpartum depression when they finish something. I've written about it before, but not this time.
This time, I'm just done.
So I do get asked the question frequently: What would you do if you weren't a writer?
And I'm, like, what? And give up all this unending, wild, dizzying happiness???
Are you kidding me?
The longest thing I've ever written is finished, and I'm sitting here looking at my notes for the next thing.
Kill me now.
3 comments:
I think I'm too inexperienced as a writer to understand that ambivalence (or ... despair?). I haven't gotten to the point where I consider my books finished because there are always more revisions. Anyway, I was up late last night reading words you wrote, so I'll just say congratulations, and I'm looking forward to reading more!
Not me. I still wilt into a puddle of happy skepticism when I finish something -- as in, "Really, that's it? I'm finished?" I convince myself that it's true, I really am finished, and I go get a Starbucks to celebrate. And then the caffeine kicks in and I remember twenty million things (or five, maybe) that I wanted to do in the book that I forgot about and suddenly I'm not finished anymore.
This phase of "finished" tends to go on for days. That's where I am now, in fact. I finished two days ago. Only not so much.
Congrats on finishing! And for clearly having a more solid grasp on the meaning of the word "finished" than I do.
I go through the same thing. When I write, "the end," and turn that page for the last time I find a big hole inside of me. It's a feeling of loss that, for me is surprisingly intense. But then I spent anywhere from 2 to 7 years working on a book (I wish I could write faster) so I guess I'd have to have some feelings about it - it just catches me by surprise. It usually takes me a week or two to clear my head and start to move on.
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