I finished the novel last night. Fourteen minutes into the last day of April.
It took the better part of two years, but its done.
Wellll, I say its done. It's a first draft. The rough draft. The backwards echo of what it will be.
I finished it at the same library where I started it. Just down the way, actually, as the library decided to close while I was typing my furious fingers though the last chapter. So when the closing bell dinged, I begrudgingly packed up my laptop, and walked away in the darkness.
There was a place, up the path from the library. something between an alcove and a breezeway, I don't know the proper word is for it--probably something french, like Adiem-d'jmour or something--I had walked past it before, I knew there were tables, and electrical outlets. But it was open to the elements, open against the trees and the night. A lone tower of electric power in the courtyards of the library grounds.
It was here that I finished twenty-one months of endless writing.
It took me over an hour to finish that last chapter. I was surprised when I heard the clock tower striking midnight through my little Adiem-d'jmour. But when it was done, I took the two chapters I had written, and type-set them into the rest of the manuscript as best as possible.
(the manuscript is so long, that when I previously tried to stitch it together, it crashed my word processor.)
When I saved the last lines of the book I felt a swell of emotion. It was love, and grief,and beauty and other things...I don't have a proper word for it, probably something French as well. How about: L'apr,ras9iouz, is that a word?
As I copied and pasted it together into two documents, I added up the number of pages I thought it might be, and laughed aloud at the sheer weight of the numbers. I called Sarah first, and then I twittered about it, and wrote a quick little "i did it" entry on my website.
Then Sarah picked me up, took my picture, made me take her picture, and then took us out for some One AM pizza & coke.
*
I printed it out this morning.
I had bought two reams of paper in preparation. Two! It was more than one giant fucking bag of paper. I had to keep feeding the printer, like some sort of gluttonous friend in a pie eating contest. Is that a bad metaphor, fuck I don't even care. I just wrote a god damned novel. I can write whatever I want now.
Speaking of the writing, I got to sample a few of my earlier pastem de'quars (another fake French word) as I printed the damn thing out. Just pages and pages of writing. Some of it terrible, pieces of it shining like I was printing mythril ink on tissues of pearl.
First drafts are shit, so who cares? It's done. The second draft can shine down to the roots. For now, its a story, and its sitting on my coffee table, and its the size of something bigger than a story. Which of course, it is. At least to me.
I would like to thank Joey, for letting me borrow his computer charger for a month that turned out to be almost two years...Also everyone who read the first few (terrible) chapters, and lied to me enough to keep me going...And Matt, and Robin, for being enthusiastic.
And of course, the Marquis St. Pepe do'quastumar, for teaching me everything I know about the French language.
-Me!
