No, not a post about the Incredible Shrinking Global Economy (please, I just had dinner!). I just finished the first draft of Meet the Larssons. Here’s how it ends:
THE END
Sorry, I should have posted a spoiler alert. It’s been 10 months, 104,258 words, and a whole lot of unattractive whining, but I made it. Now all I have to do is restructure the plot, rewrite most of it, and edit out the stupid parts. Can o’ corn.
I finished a novel. Heh.
According to Scrivener, it will be 462 pages when I print it out; it would be 277 pages if printed as a paperback.
Hey, I said if.
Sorry, I’m a little giddy, and mind-boggingly tired. In a few weeks, I’ll come back to it, and realize that of the 104,258 words, about 85,000 of them will be full of suck, but for now, I’m going to pretend that it’s all brilliant. Brilliant!
Now I’m going to have a glass of wine with Mrs. Unfocused in celebration of, well, me.
In case you’re interested, here’s what I was listening to when I wrote the final chapter: Up From the Ground Below, by M Shanghai String Band, the best original bluegrass music being performed today (as far as I know, anyway), and excellent music to finish a novel by.
It has been a busy week and a half, which is why I haven’t posted in a while, but I’m sure you’ve all enjoyed the break. I’ll try to catch up over the weekend. Meanwhile, have you been keeping up with the Absolute Write October Blog Chain?
The Unfocused Life 
Congratulations! Today I typed “Chapter One” and stared at the blinking cursor on the empty white page of death.
Congratulations!! you’ve got more guts than me.. i cant count the number of times ive tried to write a book and failed miserably lol… glad to know that we’ll have another author upon our bookshelves though! :)
Great, now I know how it ends!
Congrats on getting draft one done. Good luck with the revisions. It will be hard work but it will be worth it.
Woohoo! Congratulations!
Congratulations! There’s no better feeling in the world. Of course, it’s quickly followed by the “oh crap! now what?” feeling as you get into revision, but that first draft feels good.
Now take a couple of months off from it so you can pretend someone else wrote it when you look at it again. And relax …
Congratulations!! Enjoy your editing!!
Thanks, everyone! It’s harder to step away from it than I thought it would be.