I have finished it, and am awash with what feels like warm liquid relief.
It is just over eighty thousand words long and it is done.
I have written a synopsis and sent a couple of pages off to an agent. I will have to send it to lots of agents but have just about had enough for one day.
In a perfect world at this point I would open a bottle of champagne and celebrate with a take away, but of course it is Friday, so I can’t. Instead we are at work, and we have got to earn enough money to pay the mortgage.
I can hardly describe the pleasure of being at work and not having to do anything except be at work, and write to you, obviously. I can just sit here and read, or look at Facebook, or chat to people, or anything I like. I feel so tranquil and calm that I can hardly sit upright.
Next week it will have to be edited, and bits re-written, and carefully reworked to be as good as I can make it, and I will have to send the synopsis and the first couple of chapters to every agent I can think of, and then sit back and hope.
For the last few days I have done almost nothing else. We took two nights off work because of not earning any money, and I spent the whole time just getting the last chapters out of my head and into the computer, and finally, finally it is really, truly done. I don’t have to sit here doggedly putting one word in front of another, or reading historical accounts of battles, or finding out how guns work, or whether a seventeenth century doctor was called a physician. I can sit here and read anything I like, and it feels like a holiday.
In the middle of my final chapter I had to get up and take Lucy to the station. She is off on her banking course this weekend and has gone to stay with Number One Daughter. I put her on the train this afternoon, tight-lipped with public transport anxiety, and spoke to her again when she was on the last train to Brookwood.
She has crossed London by herself on the Underground. This does not sound like much of an achievement, but for a teenage Cumbrian who has spent all her life in a genteel girls’ boarding school it is a jolly scary thing. She has managed the whole thing with hardly any disasters, and has arrived at Number One Daughter’s, where as you can see, the poopies remembered her.
When she had gone I sloped about for a bit, feeling unexpectedly sad. All my children have gone again, and I have been so buried in my story that I have hardly seen them. I compensated a bit by posting some more toothpaste to Oliver, who has inexplicably lost his, and wished on a star.
If somebody buys it then we will be able to have some proper time off sometimes. We could go and see Number One Daughter, or go away in the camper van or just have a day by the sea.
If I have got a bit more time at home then I can write other things without constantly being disturbed by people wanting to get in the taxi.
The average time it takes an agent to read a hopeful synopsis and letter is eight weeks. I am going to get as many as I can emailed off, and then try very hard not to think about it any more at all.
All the same, I can’t help wishing on a star.
