There is something gratifying about finishing any work you do. Whether it is a pair of socks or a poem or finally making biscuits that don't pass as hockey pucks. Last month I wrote the first book in a new series in a matter of eleven days. That felt really good. However, this week I finished a book that I have been toiling on for over a year and a half. It wasn't that I don't love this book. I do. I love the MC and the plot is engaging. However, it kept getting set on the back burner in favor of more fun and jovial pieces or with a book that came like wildfire and demanded to be written. But this past week I sat down and looked at this book again and the story finally came tumbling out until I got to the end. And the end surprised me. (I love when that happens.)
There wasn't the overwhelming "YIPPEE! I finally finished!" like so many of my books have been. It was more of a contented, "It is done." A warm feeling that you did a job well. I actually had an almost sad feeling that I had gotten to the end of the story and wasn't going to be visiting the characters except to edit or revise the story. There was nothing new for me to learn about this character and in a way it was sad. But in another way it was fulfilling to know that I had somehow made the MCs' lives whole. It doesn't always feel like that when I finish a book. Maybe because I write so many books in series that there is always more to find out about one or more of the characters as time goes on, but when writing a novel, a book that has a beginning, a middle and an end, you are through. Sometimes reading the words THE END at the bottom of your page can feel so final yet so content at the same time.
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