I'm done!

I don't even know how to say this so I'll just say it: I finished my novel yesterday.

WOOT!

I had set a word count goal of 8,000 words for yesterday but by lunchtime, with only a couple of thousand words under my belt, I was closing in for the kill.

A bit later I was writing a paragraph and suddenly I realized it was the LAST paragraph. It was a stunning revelation. I had thought that writing the end would require more planning, more, I don't know, fireworks. I didn't even know this was the last paragraph... until those last few words appeared on the page and a flood of recognition washed over me in a feverish chill ... I typed a period at 2:31 p.m.

And then I started to cry.

I must say, if you're going to finish a novel, I would highly recommend you do it at a novel marathon among friends who are also writers. They truly appreciate the momentous nature of the occasion. Within minutes of that fateful finish I was hugged and high-fived, wooted, photographed, cheered and applauded.

I drove home from the marathon in a complete and utter daze. I still feel that way.

What I need to know is how I should celebrate this milestone.

Champagne?

Cake?

Dancing?

Tell me, dear friends, what I should do to celebrate.

A caveat – I'm going camping today and won't be online for about a week, but I will anxiously await your answers on my return.

Thanks to everyone for being so supportive, everyone – I am so fortunate. Hugs and big sloppy kisses to all you all. oxoxo

My novel marathon t-shirt, which I LOVE.
The caption, above, is what it says
on the back. Be careful, ex-husbands ...
you should never mess with a writer!

Forty-one more words

Hey everyone! Greetings from the 2012 Muskoka Novel Marathon in truly beautiful downtown Huntsville!

I am having a glorious time. The food is FANTASTIC, I mean INCREDIBLE (even if you don't write two words, the food is worth the drive).

My fellow writers are smart and talented and working their collective butts off. I mean, some of them are crazy, just pure crazy. I always thought I was a pretty fast writer. HA! So this is how it works: everyone writes double spaced in a common font in 14 pt. Whenever a writer finishes 10 pages, he or she writes their name and their page count thus far on a little slip of paper and posts it on a bookshelf.

I just finished 40 pages. I'm thinking I'm all that and a bag of chips. But noooooooooo - there are writers here who have finished 120 PAGES in the same time that I've done 40. Holy page count, Batman!

I don't know how they do it. I mean, I've asked and they give me reasons like the whole book has been in their heads for months and now it's just spewing out but, come on! I don't even think I can TYPE fast enough to produce 120 pages in so few hours!

I try to tell myself that they're just repeating "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country," but these people are experienced, published, talented writers and they are just CRANKING out the joy juice they call writing.

Well, kudos to them. There's no way in hell I can write that fast so I try not to pay any attention when they're posting 10 new pages every 10 minutes.

Anyway, I am doing absolutely FINE! I am only 41 words away from writing my hoped-for goal of 8,000 words today. And last night I cranked out 2,500. So I'm doing well and I'm absolutely pumped that I will meet my 8,000 word target again tomorrow.

Of course my real target is finishing my novel and I have to say it's within my grasp. The stuff I'm writing now is the very stuff of wrap-up. The beginnings of endings. It's all rather heady and wonderful and I'm happy as a pig in you-know-what.

Well, I have to go. They're about to announce the fundraising winners and after that is dinner. When that's all done with, I'm going to write a while longer, find 41 words or so deep in what's left of my tired heart, and meet my target.

This is a wonderful time to be a writer and I'm so proud to be here.

Let the marathon begin!

Today's the Big Day! WOOOOOOOOOOOOT! It feels like Christmas morning, only without the snowbanks, credit card hangover and egg nog brain freeze. (Egg nog brain freeze. That would be an egg nog noggin' ice cap. And a cap is a hat that sits on the noggin'. So really it would be an egg nog noggin' noggin'...)

Today – tonight, actually – is opening day for the Muskoka Novel Marathon. For the next three or four days (I'm only doing three) writers will be hunkered down in one room (Club 55 in the Algonquin Theatre building in Huntsville, Ontario), staring at their laptops, trying to squeeze out a novel from their fevered, blistered, battered brains. I mean, who DOES that?

Believe it or not, plenty of people have gone on to have these marathon novels published. Some of the best and brightest writers in this part of the world come to the marathon to accomplish just that. Judges will look at the finished manuscripts and the winner will go to a real life agent for critique and possible consideration.

I'm not going to be submitting my manuscript, however. In order to be judged, manuscripts have to be written during the marathon, with no other help other than a single page of notes. Me, I'm going to be using the marathon time to FINISH the book I already have in progress.

This whole novel has been a seat-of-the-pants adventure all along. I have a vague notion of what's going to happen but that's it. Generally I sit down at the computer and stuff pops down onto the page and usually I go, huh, that's cool, or that sucks, and keep typing. The problem is that it seems like I'm never going to finish. I'm more than 70,000 words into it with no clear end in sight. I was starting to feel like this was a triathlon with no finish line and the whole project was becoming a millstone around my tired neck.

So just recently I said, enough! And I sat down with my manuscript and a piece of paper and a pen, and I wrote down everything I wanted to happen. In point form. What appeared on the page was eight different events – eight chapters. That wasn't as daunting as I thought it was. I did some math and figured that if I wrote approximately 2,500 words per chapter, I would need to come up with approximately 18,500 more words to finish the novel.

I figured I could write 2,500 words on Friday night. Then I'd have 8,000 words to write on Saturday and 8,000 on Sunday. That breaks down to 4,000 words before lunch and 4,000 after. Or, approximately 1,000 words an hour.

It sounds kinda crazy, I know, but it's DOABLE. I know I'm perfectly capable of writing 1,000 words in an hour ... when I'm fresh ... the problem, of course, is keeping that up, hour after hour, for two days.

The good news is I'm going to be surrounded by other writers writing their faces off, too. Their fingers will be blistered. Their brains are going to be fried. Their backs will ache and their heads will be nodding as exhaustion sets in.

My, my, doesn't this sound like fun?

We will  cheer each other on, of course. We shall kibbitz. We shall LAUGH. We shall drink enough java juice to make Columbian coffee cartels dance with caffeinated joy.

I'm excited about this. My work in progress has been idle for too long. I want to FINISH. I want to start editing. I want desperately to send it out into the world. It's a fictional story that is based on my personal experiences and it's full of love, pain, sadness and great joy.

So wish my luck. Wish me strength. Wish my eyelids to remain open. And thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all your generous donations. Above all else, the marathon is a fundraiser for adult literacy programs. It's writers helping readers. How great is that?

The Way

I was visiting Diary of a Square-Toothed Girl just now and Lisa was asking for suggestions for summer tuneage and I was reminded of one of my favourite summer songs.

The Way is a weirdly addictive one-hit wonder by an obscure band called Fastball that speaks of people leaving their homes and kids behind in a quest for "eternal summer slacking."

Part retro drive-in dandy, part Rocky Horror, the tune has a chorus that makes me want to put the pedal to the medal on the open road, leaving all my worries in a cloud of raucous dust. I probably would not leave my kids behind ... probably... depends on how they were getting along as the key to freedom slid into the ignition.

Here. Have some summer weirdness, and enjoy the ride.

Sundae of despair? hahahaha

Erm, my poem the other day... I'm rather proud of it, if truth be told. If you think of it as a newborn baby being left to die, well, then it is nothing more than a big pool of nasty. Substitute "work project that I put my heart and soul into" for "baby" and you have a jagged hole in my heart rather than actual blood, guts and death.

In a nutshell, I helped launch a magazine that was doomed from the start. Before it even came back from the printer's, before the baby was even born, the powers-that-be decided it would never run again. And they never even told me, deeming me not important enough, I guess.

I knew it was in trouble, for many reasons, but that knowledge doesn't stop me from grieving. A pile of the mags sit on the far corner of my desk, looking pretty and happy as a newborn baby. And yet they're a dirty secret that nobody wants to talk about. There will be no launch party, no website, no champagne, no hearty congratulations, or cigars. No "good job" from the boss. No apologies. Throughout the day I steal glances at them, feeling ridiculously sorry for them and their abandonment, thinking "you deserved so much better." To me, they really are like a beautiful newborn baby that has been forgotten on the delivery room floor.

I'm very quiet in these early days of summer. I have drawn within myself, metaphorically pulled my knees to my chest in a futile stab at self-protection. I have so little ability to find my natural enthusiasm, the buoyancy that usually floats me through the days. The one thing I am seemingly successful at is alienating almost everyone I come into contact with. For a person who prides herself on being happy, on "getting along," this is almost too much to bear.

Funny how the kicks come when you're already down. When you think you can't take one more thing, that's when a letter to the editor arrives and calls your writing drivel. Or that's when your kids start fighting and one kid calls the other kid a douchebag on Facebook. Or the car breaks down, your e-mail account gets hacked, you step in dog poop in the front yard and the cat pukes on the chesterfield. You know other people in the world are suffering much more than you are, that your problems are minor and few, that you're damned lucky just to be alive, so you add guilt about feeling sorry for yourself on top of everything else. A fat glossy fire engine red maraschino cherry of guilt plopped on a sundae of despair.

Writing that just now makes me laugh at my own foolishness. "Sundae of despair?" Seriously. Who writes this crap?