Reghan Skerry

On Monday, I was convinced that I wouldn’t be meeting my self-imposed deadline to finish this story, despite the commitment I made last week. It wasn’t that there was a lot of story left to go, just… the story that was left was a bit daunting. This was the final set piece, the ultimate confrontation, and I knew it would be draining. And it was.

But I did it. The first draft of the story I started during NaNoWriMo is finished. The final count is approximately 76,000 words, which is just about perfect. (Though I already know that this is going to be one of those cases—rare for me—where the first draft runs a little short, rather than long.)

(And, yes: this means that I wrote 50,000 words in November, and then it took me two entire months to write another 26,000. But whatever. December and January are awful months to try to get anything done.)

Normally, this is the part where I’d say that the story isn’t perfect, but it’s solid, and I can definitely turn it into something good. And that might be the case (it’s probably the case), but I’m not going to say it. Not yet. I’m not in a good place to make that assessment right now.

But it’s done!

Now, I’m going to step back from this, take some time to figure out how I’m going to approach rewriting the 2016 story, and then… we’ll see.