It’s done. At 12:53am on Saturday, July 19th, I finished my first ever novel, Redeeming Pandora’s Curse. It was begun at 12:00am on November 1st, 2007. The final count for the first draft is 188,655 words. I can honestly say that at this point, the story is really and truly done (as done as a first draft can be). There is nothing I can think of that I wish I had added in, or that I feel the need to change. The first draft is complete. Now all the remains is to let it rest for at least a month, hopefully more than that. I don’t even want to look at it until mid-October if I can make myself do so. The longer the break, the better. In the meantime, I’ll switch my attention to TVE in a couple of days. I just need a few days to relax and bask in the glow and knowledge that I did manage to write a novel. When it sinks in, anyway.

How do I feel right now? Hmm, it’s hard to describe. I’m a little disappointed, because there’s no one to share my good news with. Cassie’s not responding on MSN. Jess is all wrapped in doing an avatar for Color Day. Kalli doesn’t have her internet hooked up yet and won’t be on for ages yet. No one else is on MSN. I can’t even make a post in TMG about it anymore. My parents are both asleep, and my sister and brother are out at a club. So, needless to say, it’s not quite the festive winning I had imagined. I think I need a few seconds by myself, since I can’t tell anyone. When I come back, I’ll make a post on KW and on NaNo, and hopefully someone will be around for me to tell.

Other than that, I feel like one must feel when they’re in shock. It’s not really registered yet that I won’t be spending any more time with my MC for a long time. I expect that in the next few days, I’ll miss her. I hope it won’t be too hard to make the switch to TVE. I feel a little shivery, like you do when you know something really good has happened, but you’re not sure what to make of it. I feel a bit happy – now I can concentrate on other things, but it’s mostly the ‘omg shock’ still in part. Of course, I’m tired, and I’m also looking forward to the reward I bought for myself – a lovely Peanut Buster Parfait, which has been teasing my mind all night.

I was wondering all tonight what my final words would be. Sometimes I can visualize them before I actually write them, but this time around, I didn’t know what they would be. My final paragraph is as follows:

I would always miss the box, I knew that for a fact. It couldn’t be changed; I was Pandora’s reincarnation, after all. Even now, I felt an emptiness without it in my arms. But I was also Cassis, and so when my neck felt cold without the familiar weight of the key around my throat, I made a mental note to go shopping with Risa later on so that I could find a necklace to replace it. I would try on as many different necklaces as it took, until I found one that felt just right. It would be a different kind of necklace, one that came with the promise of the future, and not the weight of the past. I would keep it around my neck forever, so that I would never forget that while the past was always around us, it was the future that we had to look forward to.

It seems to be a suitable paragraph, and I think it sums up the majority of the novel quite well. My theme was that sometimes you just have to do the right thing, even if it seems difficult, even if people will hate you for it. In some ways, I think my novel could also be construed as a message about how you don’t have to live in the shadow of anyone that you don’t want to; that your path is always there for you, waiting for you to put your feet onto it. I think that a closing paragraph could be much worse, don’t you?