I spent all day yesterday entering the remaining hand written pages of my finished rough draft for my first novel into the computer.  A second chance to clean up some passages, straighten out a few dead ends, add notes for the next draft, and discover what some of my minor characters been holding back from me.

The finished manuscript weighed in as a middleweight at 665-page (double spaced) and 120,495 words.  I printed out the remaining pages for my first reader and my reading copy (which should be the editing copy), and the whole thing as a short version (single-spaced printed on both side that should be the reading copy).  Briefly glancing at the earlier chapters and cringing at the horrible writing, I then packed everything away for the next three months to completely forget about this story.

After all that I have done for the last year, I felt empty inside.  I didn't want to do today's blog post or finish writing a new short story .  I didn't want to watch the new Top Chef Masters that aired this week.  I don't want to do diddy-squat with any kind of writing at all this weekend.

I pulled "Journel of A Novel: The East of Eden Letters" by John Steinbeck from my bookshelf.  I read about 80% of this book in 2007 when I was still playing around with the idea of writing a novel, and lost interest probably because I wasn't writing a novel at the time.  I finished reading this book last night, and found my answer to my emptiness in Steinbeck's own words.

"Then suddenly the book is done. It is a kind of death."

I am mourning.  I am mourning for my finished rough draft.  I am mourning knowing that I must leave my story in a box for three months to have the emotional clarity when it comes to editing for the next draft.  I am mourning when everything suddenly got so good.

Never mind that I found the heart and soul of my story in the next-to-last paragraph of the last chapter that ties a significant minor character to a point of view (POV) character in a meaningful way.  Or that an underdeveloped minor character made a major confession in the Epilogue that reveals not only the true nature of his character, but this also ties the various plot lines in a way that stuns the other characters, and that the minor character who is deeply impacted by all this declares her forgiveness for him.  Or distilling the entire story into a single paragraph in a query letter that I'm a year away from sending out to agents and/or publishers reveals that I have written a coming of age story.

All that waits for the next draft.  Until then, I must mourn for now and move on.