Finished!

As with the previous one, this post is a little bit tardy, but I finished the story I was working on!

Yep. Finished! On Friday, March 13th. The final count was 148,846 words, which is obviously way too long, but that can be remedied. It's not perfect, but it feels amazing to have it finished, for a great many reasons.

In some ways I suppose that it's surprising that I didn't get on here right away and write some kind of victory post, but in a way it almost felt too big for that. I might have done so if it were only a story that I'd just finished writing, like the one before it was. But this particular piece had a lot of personal stuff tangled up in it as well.

I started it around a year ago - it took me a long time to write by my standards. And during that time my life turned into some kind of crazy nightmare, and then got turned upside-down in the process of remedying the problem. When I started this story, it was pretty much the only thing keeping me going. Now is not the time or place to get started on the debacle that was my marriage, but long story short, I was so miserable that having a task to immerse myself in was a huge help - indeed, it was pretty much the only thing that did help. Then I finally started getting my life back on track again, and writing took a back seat for a while. It was still there, and I was still pottering away on it, but not as feverishly as before. It's only been over the last couple of months that I'd really started to get properly back into it again.

So now it's finished. And that it amazing. Not just because I've written another story (as amazing in itself as that is), but because of what it got me through, and how far I've come since I started it. Finishing it, it was like something was ending, but like something new was starting, because I was putting something old to rest. I laughed, I cried, I drank whiskey, ate chips, and stared out of the window. It felt good.

Finished. Nothing short of amazing.