Y Is For Yippee!

Jennifer is almost at “The End”…

There is nothing better than writing the words “The End” at the end of your manuscript. Okay, maybe there is—chocolate, selling your first book, chocolate—but bear with me.

As a writer, we start with a kernel of an idea. We push through the self-doubt that whispers, “This isn’t good enough to write about,” and begin writing. We get stuck and throw our hands up in despair. We talk to our writing friends who hopefully convince us to keep going and help us figure out what we’re doing wrong, or help us further develop our characters and plot so that we can move forward (even if, during the process, we have to go back and fix a whole lot of things!). We write as we juggle day jobs, families and distractions. We write when the words flow easily and we write when there is not a single word we can think of to put down on the page. We write from outlines and we write from the top of our heads. We talk to our characters and we shout, “Hold on!” when we get an idea in the middle of something completely unrelated to writing. Until one day, we’re done. And we write, “The End.”

We know there is editing and critiquing and more editing and deleting and rewriting that has to be done. We know that eventually we’ll have to send our manuscript out into the world for editors and agents and readers to see, and we cross every body part we can, hoping they like it. We know we’ll have to write dreaded synopses and marketing plans and talk about our writing and try to get people to purchase, read and review our books.

But at the very moment we write “The End,” we are filled with a sense of accomplishment. Because we completed what we started.

Within the next two days, I expect to type those two words on one of the two manuscripts I’m currently writing. It’s one of my fastest works and I’m pretty impressed that I completed it so quickly. I tried a new editing process with it as I went along, but I’ll still have massive amounts of editing and adding and deleting and rewriting to do.

But I’ll by shouting “Yippee!” when I type those two little words. Because no matter what happens next, I did it.