Much celebration, and a small party🎈

Posted On July 26, 2023

A HAPPY ANNOUNCEMENT

Oh ho ho! I’ve been waiting for this post a long time…

If you’re a subscriber, you already know the news.

I FINISHED MY FIRST NOVEL!

🎉🥳🎈🎊🎈🥳🎉

In the whole scope of things, is this a big deal? Ah, I don’t know. It’s basically a practice novel. I don’t know if I’ll ever try to publish it or anything like that (it needs work – a lot of work) but still.

I have proven to myself that I do, in fact, have the ability to finish a full length project!

Here are the specs, for anyone who cares:

• Title: no idea. I’m calling it Cade Chronicles – though that would more likely be the series name than the book name.
• Final word count: 70,807 (Just noticed it’s a palindrome. Makes me strangely happy.)
• Chapter count: 44
• Started: October 27, 2021
• Finished: June 21, 2023

HOW THESE EVENTS TOOK PLACE, DESPITE ALL INDICATORS OTHERWISE

I have to be honest. I absolutely, 100% would not have finished my novel last month had it not been for my amazing sister Anna. Seriously. I was ready to give up on it. In fact, one Sunday morning in June, before church, I was talking to her and trying to justify the fact that I was ready to quit.

“Maybe novels just aren’t for me. Maybe I’m more of a short story and poetry kind of girl.”

She wasn’t having it. “Just imagine how happy you’d be if you pushed through and finished.”

Ugh. Yeah. I knew she was right. But at this point I was just so sick of my novel and how it wasn’t going anywhere.

A few minutes later she gasped. “I’ve got an idea.”

I raised my eyebrow. “Yes?”

“We should finish our novels at the same time, and then make a first-draft-cake.”

(For reference, Anna was also close to finishing a novel. She’s amazing. We like to say that she’s a turtle and I’m a rabbit… she’s slow but steady and consistent in her writing. I’m super spontaneous and go from 0 to 100 to 0 in a day. LOL.)

This was intriguing. And as I thought about it, the more I liked the idea and the more excited I got.

“Sure,” I agreed. “Let’s try.”

At this point, I was in the middle of finishing up a shorter, novella-length project, but as I got closer to completing that, the more excited I got to try and finish my novel. For over a week, I’d been on a writing streak, getting down over 1,000 words a day. How hard would it be to just keep going??

So I did!!

After I finished my novella, I dove back into my novel, writing thousands of words a day (I broke my own record with something like 3000 in a day). Finally, probably a week later, I was ready to write the last chapter.

Not sure how it happened. It was like once I set my mind on it, there was no going back!

Me and Anna coordinated the timing so that we each had about one scene left to write on the same day. When our mom was working at our church one Wednesday, we went along with her to have the whole quiet sanctuary to ourselves, where we could finish together.

We eventually moved down to the church basement where there was a couch we could sit on. It was there that I typed the last words of my novel. I sat back, not even knowing what I was thinking or feeling – I couldn’t believe I’d actually done it!

MUCH CELEBRATION THENCE

Anna finished hers a moment before me, and we did a happy dance together, alone in the church basement where nobody knew what stupendous events had just taken place.

A couple days later, Anna made the promised first-draft-cake (homemade chocolate cake with homemade peanut butter icing — scrumptious) and we celebrated the conclusion of our projects.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE FIGURATIVE ROOM: “WHAT NOW?”

Good question. What now, indeed?

Well, I’m not starting another novel quite yet. I’m trying to start plotting a novella that a got an idea for a while back – I’m not sure what to describe it as, except maybe a coffee shop romance. Hmm… We’ll see. Anyways, that’s the next thing on my radar. I’ve also been keeping busy with various articles here and there.

Anywhoo. Thanks for keeping up with me and my sporadic posts. And thanks for celebrating with me. Here’s a piece of cake for you:🍰

Here’s to the future, and many more novels to come!🥂

Until next time —

Abby