When You Write DONE on the Last Page of the First Draft

Last month, I experienced the thrill of writing DONE in big letters after the last line of the last page of my 55,000-word work-in progress, a middle-grade novel set in a cottage, like my cottage, on a street filled with whimsy and wonder, like my street.

It turned out that my jubilation was a tiny bit premature, as there was still one very short scene (to be inserted a few pages earlier) that I had failed to write. But I speedily dashed that one off, and my book was indeed DONE! 

Well, at least for that one moment.

Next up would be sharing the manuscript with my writing group, the Writing Roosters, but I wanted to do what revision I could to have it ready for their review. Most of the changes I made had to do with consistency. I needed to make sure that the weeks of the story had seven days in them, not ten; that when I wrote "two weeks later," it really was two weeks later; that when I had my characters eating cherries from the neighborhood cherry tree, the cherries would indeed be ripe at that time of the summer in Colorado. A huge task! Extremely taxing for the brain! But I did it and also made myself a map of the order of the houses on the street, so that this, too, would remain consistent throughout the story.

Ta-dah!

But now I'm in the most excruciating time of a writer's life: WAITING. In particular, waiting to see what the world - in this case, my writing group - thinks about this book that has occupied me so intensely for the past half a year. There are so many things it is impossible to know until someone else reads it. 

The theme of the book has to do with magic. Is there such a thing as magic? And - the central question I'm exploring - might there be value in believing in magic, in believing in anything, actually, even if it turns out NOT to be true? I love this theme! My favorite philosophy essay ever is "The Will to Believe" by William James, asking this question about belief in God. I love movies that feature a conman coming to town and transforming it - and himself - for the better in the process, just from giving people something to believe in. Think The Music Man. 

I myself think the plot of my book poses this question in an ingeniously integrated way, where all the storylines offer some insightful revelation regarding it. I think I have produced something that itself feels magical in its construction - a thing of shimmering beauty!

But I can imagine all too well that readers who AREN'T me might think: "Oh, it feels so contrived! All the plot developments making the same stupid point over and over again! As if we didn't get it the first time! Talk about beating a dead horse to death!"

So: which is it? A thing of shimmering beauty or the flogged carcass of a dead horse?

I will know more when the Roosters meet on April 8. After having shared many a manuscript with them now, I'm pretty sure the answer will be something in between, something of the form, "We like a lot of things about this, but it needs more work."

That's okay. Revision is what writers do. That's why any DONE is always provisional. In a recent New York Times column, David Brooks reported that Marcel Proust "rewrote portions of 'Remembrance of Things Past' from his death bed." I hope I won't be doing that here! But for now, all I can do is wait. And wait. And then wait some more.