The Finisher

Over the past couple months I was working on my first commission since graduating last August.  It was for a good friend and mentor of mine who wrote a story that she wanted me to illustrate.  Now I can't show you any of the drawings, but I can say that I enjoyed working on them, even though sometimes it was a real challenge.  That's kind of what brings me to today's post, the first in about a month.  We met several times to discuss the illustrations and of course, talk would sometimes turn  off topic.  She mentioned something that has been on my mind for quite a while now.  I don't quite remember what we were discussing, but the phrase she used was, "I'm a finisher.  I do things and I finish them."  I'm sure that's not quite the exact words, but you get the gist.  I've known her for about as long as I've known Caroline, so I know very well that this is true about her.  But what struck me the moment she said that was that I, myself, am the exact opposite, and at the moment it kind of bummed me out.

I will fully admit that I have trouble finishing things sometimes.  There's this thing about deadlines with me:  if there isn't one, things just won't get finished.  While I was quite the procrastinator in school I always got things done by the deadline, albeit minutes or even seconds before.  But if there's no deadline I say to myself, "I'll do it later," or "I'll start tomorrow."  Sometimes I'll even get really excited, have a plan in place, and then I just kind of piddle out halfway through.  It's why I have dozens and dozens of novel plots jotted down on my computer and only one of them is a finished rough draft.  It's why my friend's words were on my mind ever since she said them.

The problem was that I felt bad about it, but I never seemed to be able to change it.  That little voice in my ear that said I couldn't do it was always nagging me...and nagging me...and nagging me.  So now I had a voice in each ear nagging me in opposite directions.  Talk about good angel, bad angel.

And then something really strange got into me.  I don't know what it was exactly, but it sparked some kind of fierce determination.  This determination brought me to today.  It might be an insignificant thing to some people, but today is huge for me.  Today I finished the first draft of a novel.  50,576 words to be exact.  The majority of that I wrote in the last 29 days.

I freak out and do a little dance every time I think about it!  I CANNOT STOP SMILING!  I DID IT!!!!!!!

I did it as part of NaNoWriMo, which I've talked about before on here.  Basically, you write a novel in a month.  While this usually takes place in November, they also hold an even called Camp NaNoWriMo, which goes on in April and July.  In Camp NaNo, you can set a word count other that 50,000, and you can start with a preexisting story that you've already written on.  My word count goal was 33,000 because I already had a bit written, so in all I ended up over the 50k.

That brings me to the other exciting thing!  Not only did I finish my draft, I won NaNoWriMo!  It's another thing I've started many times, but piddled out on.  This time around I beat the fudge muffins out of that thing.

The next step is editing, which I haven't done much of to be honest.  I'll need a lot of help from my best reader and idea bouncer, my mom.  I might also try to find some uninhibited readers when I get revision done.  After that will be the search for an agent, which is both a frightening and an exciting thought.  But for now, just call me Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner.  I'm totally basking in my own limelight.