I hit my two week deadline and completed my final edits. The text is done! That’s a major milestone, it means the book is done, the story is there, and I’m never going to edit those words again.

It’s been a long journey. I’m so familiar with the story having worked on it for so long that it’s rather mundane to me. These past 2 weeks I took a slow pace to keep myself from rushing and skipping over parts. Even though the story is old hat to me, I still really love the work. I had some much needed help in this last stage from two people to  stomp out typos and continuity errors. I’m very proud of what I’ve written and I think it’s a great first novel.

Yesterday, as I was bringing it to a close I went back to some final notes to make sure I was happy with those parts. I came to realize that those last bits were nit picking. I was looking for things to change based on very little. Can I write this sentence better? Does it need to be altered? Should I change it? Will someone get hung up on this sentence or word choice? Often times when I tried to change something for the better, or an attempt to make it better, I was just changing it to change it. Or, I was making it worse. Stuffing too much detail in and making it more complicated than it needed to be. Overthinking things can make it feel like you’re drowning. With that feeling coming back more and more, I relaized the book was finished.

The cover isn’t complete, but it’s very close. I have a lot of details to hammer out, but the bulk of the work is done. I’m confident I’ll have the book for sale this week and it’ll be a hell of a day to share with you.