A sense of completion

I finished the first, very rough draft of my latest story yesterday. Aside from feeling that I now have a “complete” story in my hands to whittle and mold into something worth reading, I also get two other big emotions that go along with crossing that mental finish line: Relief and Anxiousness.

Relief, because I finished. Whatever metaphor you want to use to describe it. One of the hardest parts of this project is done…actually getting the whole story from inside my head, and onto the page.

Anxiousness for a few others. One, I wonder what I’m going to work on next. I’ve got ideas building up all this time, and a few seem close to being ripe for the picking. How long before I plunge into my next novel? Also, I now face the task of tearing my most recent rough draft apart in the hopes that I can refine it and revise it. Don’t doubt that I enjoy the story I’ve written, but I believe it can be a lot better, say, if that section made more sense in the overall context, or if this scene was fleshed out with more emotion, or if this character was cut completely. These things must happen. Much of writing is rewriting.

And I feel anxious because I wonder, is this story going to make it? Did I just pour all this time and effort into something that’s ever going to see the light of day?

Whatever the case, it’s nice to have completed it. Normally at this point I do a quick brush-up of the text to check for glaring errors and fill in any holes I might have missed. Then I’ll set it aside for a bit…maybe a few days, maybe a week…and work on something else to gain distance from this story. That way, when I come back to it, I can see the errors and rough spots all the better. It’s all part of the writing cycle.

I see that smile.