Thanks to the Rolling Stones for the title of today’s rambling. 🙂
Actually works quite well. Finishing a novel is a weird time for me. Always has been. The intensity and single focus of getting to the end pushes everything aside and takes over. This is true of [Foxtrot Mike Lima] just like every other novel I’ve written.
The thing with writing a novel is that it has to end. It cannot go on forever.
I’ve been known to drag my feet writing the final chapter because I know what happens once The End appears on the page.

What you ask?
Well, a few things happen for me once the end has arrived, the first is pure joy at finishing the book. It’s a hit of all the good chemicals. Satisfaction of completion is huge. It’s no small thing to write a novel length work. Plenty of people start and never finish. So, there’s joy (and tequila), hooray! It’s awesome to have written. 🙂 It’s a celebration of how clever my freaking brain was to write the story.
That lasts from a couple of days to a week. It’s a big deal. Let’s enjoy it, right? While I’m enjoying it I start messing around with blurbs and whatnot.
Then I read the story beginning to end. And get an idea of the shape of it and hopefully it’s okay. A few scenes get tweaked. Extra things are added. Then it’s sent to my oldest daughter to read.
She sends screenshots of anything odd she finds and we laugh about my fingers typing out of order (it happens and there was a lot more in this book than any other). More things are corrected. We talk about particular characters etc.
Then I send the story to a dear friend and long time supporter who helps me keep my American’s American, and brings her golden grammar hammer to the story. (If you haven’t read Margot Kinberg, what are you waiting for?)
The next thing that happens for me (definitely part of the process) is the quiet.
Yep. Quiet.
My mind goes quiet.
It’s weird. It’s always busy, always thinking about the story, even if I am not aware that it is. But all of a sudden, it has nothing to do. It’s quiet and dark. I do not enjoy it.
So I remind it there is a novella to start thinking about. So I do have something else to work on … in this case it’s a story to follow ‘Written in Leaves‘ … but my mind is not working, it’s quiet. It stays quiet for a few days.
Then without any fanfare it starts thinking again.

Today it’s back. Today it’s mulling over this second novella.
Will I get it written over the next few weeks?
My brain is not sharing the answer to that question. 🙂