I have, indeed, finished my novel. The book is 92,025 words.
I typed "the end," and sat back to wait for the fireworks. None came. I waited for some pride to sneak in and fluff up my ego. It didn't. I waited for that sense of completion to come and overwhelm me. Again, I waited in vain.
I don't feel proud, (well, maybe a little). Let me amend that. I don't feel proud that I have a completed first draft, because that's all it is. It's a first draft, in dire need of revisions. The night before I finished it, Sunday night, I tossed and turned in my bed thinking of all the things I needed to go fix. It wasn't technically done yet, I still had to write the chapter that tied up all the loose ends. But the nagging itch, that is what I feel more than anything. The nagging urge to fix, correct, and mold what I have now into something sparkly. I feel the call to revise.
But what to do? I've read on other blogs and books of advice to writers that suggest I need to walk away from the novel for a while. I need to go do something else so when I do come back to it, my eyes won't be clouded by what I think it should be and lose the focus on what it is. It's good advice, advice I've passed on to others, as a matter of fact. But for me it's really hard to follow.
It took so long for me to commit to finishing the dang thing. Now that the story's been vomited onto the page, I feel like if I don't clean it up now I'll never get back to it. So I'm in a quandary. Do I trust the advice of people far wiser than I, or do I trust what I know about myself?
And to add more problems to my situation, I have two or three more books I want to write. The ideas for them have been bubbling around in my mental percolator for weeks, and I want to play with them. Is it cheating to write another book while I'm still committed to my first one? Novel infidelity, I'm shocked at myself.
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