It happened yesterday, with a final keystroke and a feeling of exaltation. I looked at the last words and thought of all the previous ones that had led me to that moment, of all the hopes and too-long-delayed hours of work that had produced them. I just about dislocated my shoulder patting myself on the back, because, unlike some other achievements in my life, I knew I deserved it.

The raw draft of The Footsteps of Cain is finished.

There are plenty of revisions to be made...in fact I'm sure I'll encounter many sections of it that will make me downright cringe when I encounter them, again...but 471 or so pages isn't something to sneeze at.

I'm just realizing I don't quite understand that idiom. I've never, in my life, sneezed at something that I considered to be inferior. That would be gross and spread disease.

So, on to the next phase; the edits. Time to stamp out all those pesky logic issues and inconsistent details, and just generally make the crappy stuff...better. I make a habit of rereading the stuff I wrote the day before and making some minor grammatical changes to it, so I've been doing some of that already. My hopes are that that habit has at least brought up the readability from “yikes” to “mmm, okay”. In the next run, I'm going to do my damndest to bring “mmm, okay” to “huh...pretty good”. Of course, if I get lucky and I get up to “hey, wow”, I'll take a champagne bubble bath, and everybody who wouldn't consider it creepy can come on over and hop in.

Upon further consideration, I'll be doing that alone. At an undisclosed time. In my mind. No offense...I just don't know where you guys have been.

I can't believe I made it here. I've been waiting for years to be able to focus on this; it's really gratifying to have produced something tangible, at whatever level of quality. So I'll pin an “Atta-boy” medal on my own chest and feel pretty good about it.

I'm thinking of changing the blog somewhat, to include an option for people to subscribe to notifications for new posts through email, if I can, even though for some reason Weebly doesn't recommend it. Whatever. You don't own me, Weebly. I'm sorry, Weebly...that wasn't necessary. You've been good to me, and I should appreciate that.

Shutting up. Back to work.