As of 8:47 am CDT this morning, I wrote the last words of a memoir manuscript I have been working on for about a year and a half. The first draft is done!
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the fear of finishing had led to this first draft being nearly done for over a year, and set a goal to write 1000 words every morning for the last two weeks of March to knock out the final pages of this book. I showed up every day and got those 1000 words down, even when I could tell they were not very good and will probably be edited out completely.
Writing this book has taught me that getting those words down—the ones that I know are Not Good Writing or essential to the story I want to tell—is necessary to break through to the Good Stuff. This is not revolutionary: I think it’s common knowledge among writers. But it is annoying that it indeed turns out to be true: to write a book, one must actually sit and write a lot, even when it feels like the prose is nonexistent and the deeper meaning and connection is nonexistent. Putting a writing practice into practice is not easy, and showing up every day to write nonsense can feel pretty pointless.
But today, on this last day of my two-week word count goal, I am glad I did. I used those final 1000 words to try to sum up what I think the book is actually about. And I think, after all those words, I finally know. It’s not the book I set out to write, and not the book I actually wrote, but it took writing 105,000 words (oof, I have so much editing to do!) of something to learn what the book I need to write actually is.
Of course, I’ll be able to edit and rewrite and use a lot of what I got down so far. But now that I think I know the overarching “aboutness” of the book, I have a lot of work to do before it’s ready to share with a trusted early reader or two. It is going to be hard work, and I’ll take a break before I begin a big developmental edit.
But for today, I celebrate. I wrote a book!
Big or small, what can I celebrate for you today?
Congrats on finishing!! What an accomplishment!
I hope you can find a way to celebrate that feels right and special to you! You’ve inspired me to get back to work on a children’s book idea I’ve been fiddling with. 📚