Done, Done, Done Done Done!

Yep. I finished. At 6.47 this morning I finished my book. Just under 69K in 31 days. Phew...

NMow, I know it's a long road ahead. I'm already swimming with revision ideas, and I haven't even read the book yet! That's my job for tomorrow. I'll write myself some notes while I read, then put it aside until January or February. There's a lot I need to add. As I wrote, I discovered more and more similarities between my characters who think they have none. Music also needs to be threaded through it much more. The key to me finishing was music, a specific song by the Beach Boys which will have to be referenced early on for its reappearance later to make sense.

So am I happy? Yes and no. I'm thrilled that I managed to do it. I think there are moments of beauty and wonderfulness in there, but they are buried in a lot of overwritten garbage. I'm going to need to do a lot of cutting and tightening to get it to where I want it to be. I also need to make the two character voices more different. Somewhere along the way I realized Tony is much more observant and sensitive than I thought he was, and Lucy is much more self-centred. So their voices need to shift to reflect that.

In terms of shape, just printing it out has shown me that the early part of the book is way too long, while the middle, leading up to the climax is too short. I'm going to have to try and shift some of the events from early in the book to a later stage, or just scrap them and write new scenes. We'll see. I also think I've done some wonderful tricky stuff in several places, leading the reader to believe one thing, then throwing them off with it being something completely different. Even I didn't know the last one of those was going to happen! It just made sense when I was writing this morning.

Have you managed to finish anything lately? And does it feel good?