At 9:27AM this morning, mere minutes before I had to run out the door and drive to work, I wrote the concluding sentence of my first novel. I hit the save button, dashed out the door, and told everyone within earshot that I was done.

There were high-fives (including four from my very supportive husband). There were brownies (and they were delicious). There was even wine (thanks to one of my very beautiful friends who graced us with her company for dinner). For all intents and purposes, we celebrated the heck out of the conclusion of my first novel.

Truth be told, though, the reality of what’s happened today still hasn’t really even sunk in yet, and I don’t think it will for yet awhile longer. I mean, I wrote a novel. Tt’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was old enough to envy my mother her publications (she’s a writer as well, and a very talented one at that. I come by my writing skills honestly).

It’s just crazy. It’s nonsense. It continues to dwell comfortably in the halls of “maybe someday” and has yet to hop, skip, and jump onto my list of things that have really happened during my life.

Tomorrow begins the editing, and there will be a lot of it. As a writer, I have a bit of a blindspot and that blindspot is the physicality of my characters. I do a fairly decent job describing where my characters are and what they’re doing, but when I’m writing I tend to forget to mention what they’re wearing and what they look like.

Tomorrow I’ll start working on fleshing out my skeleton of a book with some strategic details, and maybe tie up a loose end or two that I just know are floating around out there somewhere in the ether.

After that, maybe I’ll try to get it published. I’m going to have a few friends read it first, friends who will tell me if it sucks or not, and if they reckon it’s worth a try I might just do it.

Who knows? Maybe if I get published I’ll celebrate with more than brownies. I guarantee you this much, if I get published there will be steak.

Until then, I’l just continue to putter around with my story, tweaking and re-wording, until I can get up the courage to allow someone other than Wes and my NaNoWriMo friend to read it. Also, thanks to everyone who wrote a comment of congratulations, those made me smile so wide it was almost painful, but in a really good way.