Tag Archives: celebration

I finished a novel today.  I reached Canto One Hundred and Eighteen (I inexplicably call chapters cantos and pretend that they are really parts of an epic poem or story-song).  I put an ending on the story I have been working on since the Summer of 2012.  Now, it probably is not obvious to you, especially if you are a writer who takes a rough draft and reworks, rewrites, revises, and does several other things to it that start with re-.  I don’t work that way.  I build a story with stone blocks, and am loathe to take foundation stones out of it once I’ve constructed the castle in the air.  So this story, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius, starts with gossip in a post office, and ends with tears and laughter at a wake for a beloved character whom I never expected to die when I started the story.  It can no longer be changed.  Like any stone structure, all I can do now is polish the surface.  So, I am elated.  The worst of the birth pangs are over.  Have you ever tried to pass a stone castle?  Painful is a total understatement.  And I have to say, I love this story now with a passion, even though when I reread it out loud to polish it, it is going to tear my heart out all over again.  But it is done, and the celebrations must now begin!