Hint: there’s two
After two years of dramatic ups and downs, rewriting most of the plot halfway through, changing the opening and the ending at least five times, I sent the final manuscript for Book 3 to my editor on Sunday.
Unsurprisingly, recent tensions levels have been high in the Scott House, prompting my teenage sons to tell me, more than once, to ‘chill my base’, one of those mysterious slangy concoctions of the young, none of whom I’m sure ever had to deliver a 450-page-novel by six p.m. sharp on a day that, regardless what date it is, always arrives at least two weeks early.
They’re on the very last page
The first half hour after you hit ‘send’, you’re in a state of shocked disbelief. All the things you meant to include, how could you possibly have forgotten about those, surely, it can’t be too late to pop them in somewhere? There’s a general swell of ‘what have I done?’ rolling round your mind as your hand itches to google ‘how to unsend an email’ (which, incidentally, comes up on top of the search bar predictions, revealing an unsettling world full of people trying to unsend things).
Within the first twelve hours, things continue to see-saw. You resign yourself to the chilling fate that your editor is, no doubt, calling an emergency team session right now (on Sunday, that’s how urgent it is), to discuss damage control options for the pile of words you just delivered. By bedtime, you’re thinking, maybe it wasn’t all bad. Some parts really were quite good and you love those characters. Or do you? Should you have taken a different route altogether in Chapter 35 and if so is it too late to do so now? (Yes, it is). Hours later, you’re staring into the darkness above your bed, not remotely chilling your base but composing emails to your editor to ask if she didn’t think you should get rid of the antagonist on page 276 rather than 301.
The End!
But by morning, miraculously and oh-so-beautifully, all gremlins and (most) doubts have vanished. You’re done. The day belongs to you (unthinkable!), and tomorrow does too (yay!), and the day after as well (hooray!). Leisurely grocery runs await and proper hikes with the dog rather than harried marches round the manky dog-run; drinks with your hubby on the balcony, pottering through the garden or simply reclining on the sofa doing — gasp — nothing at all… It’s a blissed-out, loosey-goosey, boneless emptiness unlike any other, made especially beautiful by the fact that it’s hot and sunny and summery outside and you finally get to re-join the world.
