OH MY GOD IT'S DONE

Sooo...maybe this isn't as great an accomplishment as Athena's publication of AG (and congratulations to her! I promise I'll order it. One of these days). But it means rather a lot to me personally, and I know you guys'll party with me about it, so here goes.

I have finally finished a short story I began over a year ago.

Yeah, I know, I know. But that's the thing about the way I write. I get the "bug" and dash off a page of self-contained brilliance, or the beginning of a novel that I dream about and plan out and hang out with the characters of, and then for whatever reason, I slowly stop writing about until it's left half-finished and languishing in bottom-drawer hell. So actually getting to write the ending that I've had planned out for over a year (because that's how I plan my stories: I set up the premise and the characters and the backstory, and then I decide how I'd like it to end, and then I start writing and wait and see how everything else falls into place. So far it's worked.) is a really big deal for me. In fact, this might be the first piece of original fiction that I've worked on for longer than one day and that wasn't a school assignment, that I've actually finished.

Maybe this isn't such a great track record, but it pleases me. Why? Because I'm working my way up. Last summer, I completed a twenty-chapter fanfic that I started and posted to ff.net on a whim, and then had to finish. That was an accomplishment for me. Today, I've posted the end of Paper and Ink, and that's a bigger accomplishment. But the reason both of these matter to me is not what they are, but what they could be.

These two small successes mean that I have brought myself to the point where I can finish things, rather than find some small fault with them and let it grow until I can't move forward anymore, or get bored and flutter off to another project. And that means that I can finish a full-length novel.

And that means it's party time.