Optional soundtrack:
Yesterday, something unnerving happened.
My friend/housemate and brilliant writer Daisy and I were writing in our house – our moods fluctuating between elation and despair, as they always do when we realise that this is what we have chosen to do with our lives – and I realised that the story was nearly over.
I hadn’t seen it coming, but somehow I had manoeuvred myself towards an ending. Cue a panicked ‘I’m nearly done’ to Daisy and an ensuing trip to our local shop to pick up the essentials:
Haribo and Punk IPA – manna from heaven
Then I retreated to my room and wrote the final chapter. Daisy came up at regular intervals to give me more IPA and tissues. By now the tears were streaming down my face as – *spoiler alert* – it’s a sad ending, and probably a dinner of sugar, E-numbers and gelatine wasn’t the best plan (sorry, Grandma). But by half past six, a quite unremarkable hour and not nearly as dramatically as The Cartographer’s Daughter (completed after midnight in a cold conservatory lit by candlelight and a red wine haze), I was finished.
Of course, this is a lie. It’s a first draft, embarrassingly unpolished and downright emotionally trite in places due to my love of tragic (in both senses of the word) films with tragic dialogue. I’m hopeful it will be the second book of my two-book deal with both publishers, though I intend to give them at least two ms to chose from. So there are edits to do before I send to beta readers, to hero agent Hellie, to publishers, and then editor comments, plot upheaval, line edits and proofs to address.
But I don’t think I’ll really recapture this feeling of it being done until it is (hopefully) sent to the printers to become a book. This hasn’t even happened with TCD yet, so there’s plenty of time to say good bye.
Addendum: T pointed out to me that it was about this time last year I finished TCD. I just checked, and in fact it’s to the day. To. The. DAY.
Weird.