The Friday finish

I like to start things on a Monday but I also like to finish things on a Friday. I work on my books during the week and just do whatever on the weekends. Of course, I try to work on revisions during the weekends, but I like to leave the weekends open since I have a schedule to follow during the week and I don’t want to live by the clock on weekends, too. So, yeah, when I’m almost finished working on something, I try to finish it on a Friday.

And I was able to do just that on THIS particular Friday. Today, on this particular Friday, I wrote the last 3 chapters of the YA novel I started writing last year. The book is DONE! WOOHOO!!!

I am SO excited that I finished writing the novel. Of course, I am always happy when I finish writing a book, but this particular book is a novel! And not only that, it is a Young Adult novel.

It’s my FIRST YA novel!!! I have written a YA novel! Yippee!!

But the thing about writers is that even when we are done writing something, even after we type that “—30—“ or “The End,” we’re still not sure if the work is actually done. In fact, I was hesitant to call it “done” today. I still need to tweak some things, of course. And I want to go back and check a few things. Maybe add a few things.

But the story I had in my head was all written up. My character pretty much rode off into the virtual sunset.

On paper, at least.

But in my head, I was still thinking about the story. And the worst part of it was, I was still thinking about it right around the time I had to pick my son up!

A couple of the scenes towards the end of the story were pretty intense. I got so caught up thinking about those scenes as I was driving to pick up my son that I realized something: I was driving too slowly. I noticed that I was driving less than 20 mph! And not only did I realize that I was driving too slowly, but I was also going in the wrong direction!

Grumbling, I sped up and turned around. When I FINALLY arrived at the place I had to pick up my son, I noticed a bus parked out in front of it. I didn’t think much of it. Then I noticed a guy walking out of the building carrying a camera tripod. Jesse walked outside and he told me the guy was with the KEZI news team. I am a huge fan of KEZI – that’s the news I put on every morning! – so I walked over to the guy to introduce myself and I asked him for his business card. He gave me the card and I made a mental note to find him on Twitter later (which I did – Hi, David!).

I am really glad I finished writing the novel. I started writing it the first day of last year and now it is done. It is kind of surreal that I finally finished writing this book. I mean, I have not been working on it as long as some other WIPs, but it IS a kind of novel I have not written before. I guess that’s one of the perks of my whole plan this year to finish the books I’ve had going on for some time. A lot of them are going to get DONE and a lot of them are challenging my writing in ways other projects have not. And because of my plan to finish writing books, I am going to be pushing myself to write them whether I feel that I can or not.