I have finished.
My story is written.
It is a year to the day since I saved it to the file for continuation – not a year since I started it, probably more like a year and a half – but the file was dated 16th of March last year, and so I determined that I would not let that date pass, and I didn’t. It is finished, done, complete, and I feel like Douglas Adams when he got to the fifth book in his Hitch Hiker Trilogy, and savagely and ruthlessly murdered every single character on the last page. Apparently his agent had locked him in a cupboard by then, determined that he would get the thing written so that they wouldn’t have to repay the massive advance the publisher had given to him. He had decided, however, that he did not have the smallest intention of writing another.
Of course it isn’t actually finished. I will have to spend some time editing the thing, re-writing the early bits where I changed my mind later on about what would happen, there are a lot of these because I changed my mind a lot, but the actual composition, the terrible tedium of slowly and patiently explaining my heroine’s adventures, step by boring step, is over.
I have been sending it to Mark who fortunately thinks that it is not nearly as dull to read as it has been to write. This is just as well as I do not think anybody would read it if they were as bored with it as I have been.
Actually some bits were quite fun to write. There were some bits where even I felt quite thrilled and excited by her adventures, but they were about twenty chapters ago, and after that the labour of just simply writing it set in. I do not believe in writer’s block. You just have to keep putting the words on the page, even if they turn out to be the wrong ones and you have to rewrite them later.
I will edit it and cut out the dull bits and send it to my tutor, who has promised to recommend it to her agent.
I got so engrossed in it this afternoon that I forgot about everything else, and when I finally staggered down the stairs I discovered that the dogs had got themselves shut in the conservatory and the fire had gone out.
I was more concerned about the fire, because I had been sitting still for ages, albeit in an assortment of jumpers and woolly socks and slippers, and tiresomely it had not burned out, but merely gone out, leaving a forlorn pile of scorched logs in the grate.
I got it going in the end. Also I was not terribly bothered about the dogs, who instantly rushed in and curled themselves up in front of the newly-glowing fire, because at the moment I think that the conservatory is absolutely the best place for them. They woke me up this morning, sitting by my bed making little whimpering noises, which did not make them popular because of last night being Saturday, and late. I got up in the end, and after I had tripped over them a few times, hoofed them out in the back yard to mill about there.
They did not mill about, but scrabbled at the back door, pressing their noses against it in disgusting dribbly patches and barking, until in the end I let them back in again, at which point Roger Poopy was sick on the floor.
I would like to say that there were no words for my outrage, but actually there were. There were plenty of words, and I used them all.
They were upset then, and sloped off into the conservatory to lie on the sofa. They even stayed there after our walk, which was how they had come to be inadvertently imprisoned in there, even though the sun had gone in and the day had become uncomfortably cold.
The first dandelions were out on my walk this morning, their bright yellow faces turned to the sun.
It is a hopeful sign.
Spring will be with us very soon.
