What a journey! There’s always a sense of sadness when I come to the end of writing a book. That’s not the only emotion, mind you. There’s fear, lots of that. Fear that it isn’t enough. Fear that there are spelling mistakes and grammatical farts all the way through. Fear that the characters aren’t defined enough, or too much, or that I’ve pushed too hard in the wrong direction and the audience just isn’t going to like it. Fear. Squid-loads.
There’s also a growing anticipation, something like excitement, only it’s a slow burn. Like a forest fire burning beneath the soil burn. The ground is hot, it’s hard to sleep, my heart palpitates and skips every now and then. Of course, that could easily be the coffee or the gin, or the coffee mixed with gin. Or good ol’ fear, because that never really goes away. But it is exciting and it is something to look forward to and it’s one of those times when I can push a button, upload the files to be published and sit back and allow myself a smile. Sure is a lot of excitement in there.
What else is there, what else? There’s exhaustion, yup. And trepidation or anxiousness or nervousness, however you want to describe it. Embarrassment? Oh, yeah, there’s that. You probably wouldn’t think it, but it’s there. Heck, someone merely reads out the title and my cheeks flare and my mind to starts swimming about and my mouth goes even more babbly than usual. Thick skin? Me? Hardly. Maybe calloused is a better word.
Iris of the Shadows is finished, ready to face the big, wide, scary world. There’s nothing left but to start the process of publishing – there’s the blurb, the synopsis, and the front cover to do, along with figuring out where it sits on a book-shelf. There’s also the page layout for Lulu, the shortcuts for Smashwords, the promoting and pre-launch and, oh, so much more to do!
But, over all of this, there’s a sense of sadness. The writing has come to an end. There’s no more, not unless I want to slaughter the story and cram more chapters into it and bloat the crud out of it. It has grown, been pruned, grown more, had accidents and chunks taken out of it. It’s time to see what it can do, time to test whether all the effort was worth it or not. Is there really anything more I can do? No, like a child turning of age, the book has to get its own home, find a job, get married and have its own kids. Or, at the very least, start helping with the laundry and maybe cook a meal once a week.
