Draft? Done. DONE!!!!!!!!!

I meant to post an update on Saturday night, but trust me, it's good that I didn't. No one need witness my mental state at that time.... because...

I FINISHED THE DRAFT OF MY NOVEL.

Do I need to say that again? I sure as heck want to....

I. FINISHED. THE DRAFT. OF. MY. NOVEL!!!

It's a little bit crazy. When I posted on Sept 1, I said that I planned to complete the draft "sometime" in September. I was thinking it would take until mid-month, maybe longer. But immediately after I wrote the blog post, I added 2,000 words to the WIP. Then on Monday I added another 2,000 words. Ditto Tuesday and Wednesday. I wrote 3,000 on Thursday.

My sweet husband actually slept on the couch Thursday night because I was busily writing in bed. He came in, I gave him one of those looks -- the one that says: I am in the creative zone. Get the hell out or I will hurt you. He sneaked away, and shortly before midnight I typed the words END OF NOVEL.

I'm still in shock.

I told myself I would take a break, but the next morning, I was just too pumped. I started pulling the scenes together from multiple documents in to one full draft and doing a light edit. By Monday night, that was done.

The last couple of days I took some time to write a few scene expansions. Not much -- just another 2,000 words. Plus some cleanup work. I'll have to do another round or two of editing on my own before it goes to my editor, author-friend JR Pearse Nelson.

Also, let's laugh at this sentence from my 9/1 post: "My delusional self thinks I can get the website running and my graphics started this month, and done by October. I know that's crazy."

Right. Well.

I sensed last week that the end was coming, so I went ahead and contacted my graphic artist about getting things started. We worked on the concept for a few days. The more I talked, the more I could envision my banner design and the branding style I want to use for this novel. (It's really cool, by the way.)

I also touched base with my website guy. He assures me that the site will be a snap. Can we get it up fast enough for me to write my next post on the new site, NG? I'll make you cookies. :)

At this point, I'm tentatively going to say the book will be available in early November. If the excitement doesn't kill me first.

Woot, woot!