it’s done!!!

Finished the novel last Sunday night. Of course there are things to ‘fix’ and I have to go back and smooth things out for continuity’s sake (dates, names, etc.) but the flesh is on the bones and I’m feeling pretty happy about it.

my brother asked me, “it’s done? how do you know? I can’t write an email without revising it six times before I send it off.”

he’s right…it will be tough to know when to stop tinkering with it. For now I am trying like hell to stay away from it, give it a bit of distance. I find it (the novel) is behaving like an evil beau…constantly trying to lure me back to it, trying to get me to sneak off to my writing room and give it a few strokes.

Dorothea Brande is keeping me honest. here’s what she has to say about the matter.

“You are simply not ready to read your story objectively when it is newly finished; and there are writers who cannot trust their objectivity toward their own work much under a month. So put it away and turn your attention to something else. Now is the time of times for the reading which you have been denying yourself. Your story is safely written, and will preserve the marks of your personality so tenaciously that not the deepest admiration for the work of another writer will be likely to endanger it.”

For today I am safe. I have let out my little room to my son and his friends for a pizza party. Perhaps I will pick up a new book and let my mind wander…