First draft done!!

This morning, a few minutes before 10:00 a.m., I put the last words on the last chapter of my novel, Make Nice -- the first draft, that is.

It's been a long process so far. According to my notes, I got the idea for the book on Jan. 6, 1996, and started writing in June 1998. So that makes four and a half years between first and last words. I didn't work on it steadily during that time, during which I lost and found several jobs, completed work on two books of short stories, and indulged in various other non-novelistic activities. In fact, I wrote 18 chapters, more than half the book, in the last year alone, as I figured out better ways to work, resolved plot problems and put aside any other projects. Getting laid off my last full time job in early October also gave things a boost.

I'm still down in the desert, of course (see the last entry). When I finished the last chapter and had backed the whole book up to a zip file on a diskette, I went outside the house and walked over to the scrap pile. (All desert houses have scrap metal piles, there's a law or something.) Choosing a thick metal bar and a large gong-like metal lid, I paraded by myself across half a mile of desert, clanging energetically. I walked to Philip and Rick's house, where Christine, my host, had already gone to have breakfast. They praised me, then we all ate waffles. It's a gorgeous day, warmer than the last three days. Christine and I took a walk later in the jojoba patch while Philip and Rick and company went to Desert Hot Springs.

So, this is an exciting, momentous day. Of course, there's still tons of work to do. The finished book is something like 175,000 words -- at least twice as long as any sane publisher would like, quite apart from the question of whether all those words are really necessary -- and I expect to cut at least a third to a half of that. But it's easier to cut 75,000 words than find yourself 15,000 words short, that's for sure.

Happy new year to me and to you.