I finished my first novel a few weeks ago. It’s currently with my sister, a retired English teacher, who is studiously correcting all of my verb tense shifts, fragmented sentences and poor word choices.

My emotions vary between excitement, fear and relief. I’m excited because I wasn’t sure I could do it. My fear comes from the thought “What if it sucks?” and I’m relieved because it’s been 6 years since I started the damn thing: It’s about time I finished it.

It never should have taken so long but when I was working two jobs I really didn’t do much except work and sleep. Then I had to reacquaint myself with my own book, trying to remember the story, scouring my notes for where the hell I was going with it all. Then there were times when I was just plain frustrated because I thought every word I was writing was crap. The words led to crappy sentences which fed into crappy paragraphs until I had pages that reeked. So I would stop working on it.

My last roadblock was a few months ago when I wrote myself into a corner. I inadvertently created problems in my story that I couldn’t resolve and have the story continue to make sense. So I did the mature thing and stopped working on the book altogether. I took my ball and went home, left all my characters milling about on the playground bitching and complaining.

It took a few months but the family at the center of the story finally hounded me enough to get back to work. I concocted a way out of my plot problems, changed direction in the middle of writing it, and then took another left turn to eventually wind up at the dark place at the end of the road.

So now after six years it’s finished except for a final edit. Don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet but I’m proud of it. On to the next project.