Finished!

I... Oh gods, give me a moment. *Deep breath*

Ok, I'm alright. I'm good.

Right, OK, so.... I'm finished. Done. Complete.

I just wrote the final chapter of 'Grey Sister'.

For the past eight months, this has been my whole goal. Everything I've been working towards. A whole book, written from start to finish. And I've done it. I actually made it. I didn't give up half way or forget about it or move on to something else. I actually finished. And you know what?

It was easy. 

Don't get me wrong. It was hard. REALLY hard. Its been hours and hours, day after day, of work. I've not stopped thinking about writing for more than twenty minutes at a time. It's constantly on my mind, constantly wanting my attention. I've sacrificed a lot of hours that I could have been spending with friends or family or my boyfriend for it. I've put aside books I've wanted to read, stopped watching TV shows I loved, I've even cut down on my long, lovely soaks in the bath because The Book Always Comes First. I've kept working in a shop and put aside my career plans aside, passing up on job opportunities because I so wanted to do my best and try to achieve this one, stupid, outlandish dream.

The writing itself has been a huge learning curve, figuring out all the rules from scratch and working my way through plot holes and poor grammar and my constant desire to repeat the same basic writing techniques again and again (and again. See? There I go again with the triplication!)

But it's been fun. So fun. The best fun (Triplication again, dammit). Even though it was tough, writing has never actually felt like "work". I've never sat down to write and wished I could be doing something else. Even when I struggled to find the words or got stuck in a scene, I've constantly enjoyed the simple pleasure of writing.

While it has been a long time, it never really daunted me how far I still had to go. If it had been an university assignment, the idea that I would be working on it for the next who-knows how many months would have made me want to run and hide. But the only thing that's ever really scared me about writing has been finishing. Because next is the really hard bit and I'm equal parts excited and terrified to enter the publishing game.

I'm so happy that I've finally made it. I keep insisting that getting published is the main aim of all this, but actually writing a whole book has always been the biggest goal. If nothing else, even if 'Grey Sister' never comes to anything more than a series of files on my computer, I'm so glad I've done this.

So then, for one last time.

The word count, as of 9th March, 2014 is:

135, 917.

Eight months since starting. Prologue and twenty three chapters. 

Completed.

Now, where's my champagne?