Finished!!

Hello, fair blog readers! My apologies for the late post today. Yesterday was probably the worst day ever. And by ever, I'm not sure I have experienced a worse day in all my 22 years of life. I thought I'd already had the worst day ever, but getting lost in Venice was at least something where I had control over the outcome. Yesterday was not one of those days.

But I survived yesterday and ended it by eating crepes and watching Downton Abbey with my little sister and my roommate/best friend, so that was all right.

Besides, I did not open this blog page to tell you about my Worst Day Ever. I opened it to tell you some NEWS: I finished my novel!!!

Specifically, I finished my first draft of "The Long Road Home," lovingly referred to as "that Irish novel." (Writers: do you also refer to books by things other than their titles, or just me? Mine are always "that French Revolution novel" or "that Irish novel" or "that London Blitz" novel.)

So, what now, you ask?

Well, my little sister is visiting me in Ithaca for the week, so I am taking the week off to hang out with her whenever I'm not at work. After that, I plan on trying my hand at writing a one-act play, because my aforementioned roommate/best friend is an actress currently without any acting to do, and also because why not give it a try?

And then of course there are the edits. So many edits. I'm not sure I've ever been so aware, immediately upon finishing a draft, just how much work needs to go into a piece to make it work the way it should. But I think this one could REALLY work if I get all the little jigsaw pieces to fit exactly as they should.

My new goal is to have it ready to send out into the world by the time many writers are gearing up for the madness that is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November. That should give me plenty of time to do edits of my own, send it out to a beta reader or three, and do another round after that.

So... anybody want to beta read a rather dark fairytale about the Irish potato famine for me? :)

And writers - what is it that you do after you finish a project? Do you do a victory dance? Do you read a lot? Sleep a lot? Catch up on tv? Or do you dive immediately into your next project?