The Goddamn Thing Is Goddamn Done.

I sent The Chapter off to the publisher a few minutes ago.  Now I’m sipping a bit of Scotch and trying to decide how bad it would be, really, to simply collapse on the floor when the last of the adrenaline wears off in about … now.

Ninety pages — 90 — and 17,839 words.  I think I wrote 10,000 words since last Friday night.  My Scrivener file for the project, which contains the draft and all of the research, is a whopping 178 MB. The last couple of weeks have been a little challenging, to say the least.  If the Siren hadn’t stepped up and just handled everything (even more than she usually does) I’d have fallen apart days ago.

Unless you’re an estate planner in Illinois, or (like me) a litigator with a quirky niche practice, you’d fall asleep by page 2.  But for that narrow audience, I think this treatise is going to be really useful, and I’m glad to be a part of it.  It’s not a novel, but it’s major work and it’s going to be published with my name in big bold type on the cover sheet for the chapter.  It may not be the same as seeing something I wrote on display at airport bookstores nationwide, but it feels pretty damn good.

I did learn a couple of important lessons in the last few months of working on The Chapter, mostly in the last few weeks.  Here’s a short list before I pass out from exhaustion:

• The process was educational; I’ve learned some substantive law in subjects I didn’t know much about.
• Now that the hard work is over (until they send it back for revisions), I’m really glad I volunteered.
• It’s amazing how quickly I can type when I need to.
• It is possible to do a massive research project without wasting truckloads of paper.
• I also learned an important lessons about starting big projects on time and working consistently, so that I can finish them on time without unnecessary stress and drama.

Bwahahahaha.

OK, seriously, time for bed.