Thoughts On Finishing a Novel

There’s nothing better than the sigh when the first draft’s finally done, the emptiness that comes to mind after the marathon is run. What started as a fun notion, an idea that you thought was neat became a swim through an ocean, that leaves the soul tired and beat. On and off for nearly a year, searching for the right things to say, forever living under fear that no one will care anyway. Some days you push a thousand words. other day its barely sixteen, wondering if the plot’s absurd, if readers will miss what you mean. Loose threads abounding everywhere, must work them back into the weave, show just the slightest lack of care, the reader will cease to believe. Knowing that once you are complete the internet waits with its fangs, they’d never attempt such a feat… but sure love tearing down a man. Wondering why you still do this… it’s a crap-shoot to make some cash, undertaking all of the risk, exposed to the critic’s tongue-lash. But what would you do otherwise, with the stories growing within, that soon push everything aside ’till they fill your mind to the brim. Something from nothing, insistent that others know that it exists, wants to be something permanent, I guess that is why we persist. Maybe we’re arrogant to think that it means a damn to the world, maybe full of it to the brink to think our words are precious pearls. Odds are we’ll be fast forgotten, all our efforts will be a bust, so why do we still do it then? no other reason than we must. There’d be no peace within ourselves, no real fulfillment in our life, and so the stories we will tell, the novels we will have to write. And even now, when it’s all done, a new challenge is forthcoming, I’ve wrote the book, I’ve had my fun… now how do I sell the damn thing? Hmm…