So, Now What? (or Life After ‘The End’)

Oh God, where to begin? I always imagined that reaching the end of The Blind Side of Love would fill me with so much relief and excitement and bubbly-happy energy that the first thing I’d do after typing “the end” would be to tell the world and then to write a long, rambling post expressing all my deepest feelings. And call my mom. And bounce around the apartment. And yell random stuff from my balcony.

Instead, I typed the words “the end” and I got out of my chair and I went to fold laundry. For ten minutes I folded laundry, feeling absolutely nothing. Eventually, I thought, “Maybe I should tell people.” So I went back to my computer and I shared the news with Twitter and Facebook and I went back to folding laundry. And I kept thinking, “I should feel something, no?” And I did feel things but they were mixed and at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum so they canceled each other out.

It’s impossible to express how it feels to find the end of a novel. I say “find the end” rather than “finish” because I don’t believe that a novel is ever finished. As Leonardo da Vinci said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” And with a novel there’s finding the end and then editing it until you think to yourself, “This is good enough,” and passing it to other people who will tell you, “It could be better if you do this and that,” and then there is the moment where everyone agrees, “This is good enough.” And then all you can do is hope that it really is good enough. Good enough for what? I don’t know.

“Art is why I get up in the morning, but my definition ends there. You know, it doesn’t seem fair that I’m living for something I can’t even define.” – Ani Difranco

I’m still not sure what it is I want to say with this post because I’m all over the place still. So, bear with me.

I’ve been working on this novel on and off and on and off and on again for the better part of a decade. To most people it’s a story you open and read and either enjoy or not enjoy and then move on from. But to me it’s the core of everything that makes my life what it is right now. Without it I would not be living in France, I would not have met K, I would not have most of the friends I have and these are priceless things. These are things that go beyond the question of whether the book is good or whether the book gets published or not published or whether it gets 5-star reviews on amazon or 1-star reviews.

To everyone else it is either a good book or a bad book or a mediocre book. It is, in the end, just another book.

And the knowledge of that makes me feel very lonely, despite all the other, more positive feelings. I can hope that people enjoy it and I can hope that people think it’s wonderful and that the hours spent with it are worth it for them. And I do hope for those things. I worked very hard to write a book I believe in, which is the only thing any writer can do.

So yes, there’s lots of feelings. And while I’m sorting through them, I want to take a minute to thank my beta journal people for reading along all of these years and for dropping comments once in a while. And I want to thank my friends for being awesome. I don’t have the words to express how much you guys mean to me.

And of course, I need to thank K for putting up with my crazy writer self and all my highs and lows and logical and illogical insecurities and all the stuff that would send most people screaming for the hills.

And so, now what?

Now I get really drunk and dive back into the novel and see what exactly I’ve been working on all these years, while trying really hard not to hate it, or, God forbid, thinking it needs a third rewrite. And I also get to edit out all the stuff that needn’t be there and hopefully make it into the best book possible before handing it over to other people.

I also get to move on to the next writing project, which is, as far as I can tell: Rayne v2, which I’m super excited about. It’ll be sort of like version one only gayer and more magically delicious. Actually, I’m not sure it could be gayer. But it will be more magically delicious. And it will have a totally awesome demon. I’m really excited about my demon.