I finished a rough draft of my novel!

It took me almost exactly two years to get to this point–two and a half when counting research–but I now have a whole book on my hands and can start editing with a fuller knowledge of what happens in the book.

It feels kind of strange, even though it isn’t done by a longshot. There was always a little bit of doubt in the back of my mind that I would ever finish the novel, even a very rough draft of it. Maybe because I’d spent a year on a previous novel that I had to shelve and kill, the possibility that I’d keep switching projects for years without finishing anything loomed in my mind. Sometimes it’s good to be stubborn. Writing the final few paragraphs of Hyphenates was surreal and exciting, knowing that they are (or may be) the actual end of the novel.

If things go reasonably well, I should have a real finished version of the book in 6-8 months to start sending out. In any event, I’ll only work on this up to eight more years before I give up on it.

Mission accomplished. Sort of.