It’s done. The novel is done. I’ve finished the lengthy process of checking through The Hypernova Gambit, and there’s really nothing more I can learn from this, and nothing more I can do to it without help. There’s some reformatting and tidying to do, now that I’ve gotten it into one big file, but it’s complete. Unless I’ve got a very good reason, the project officially ends here, and I don’t think I’ve quite got my head around it. The bottle of champagne I’ve kept around for this occasion should hopefully help me with that when I crack it open later, but at the moment, I’m somewhat shell-shocked.

I’m also mildly horrified that in the last rewrite, despite going all-out to trim the fat, up the pace and remove any unnecessary digressions… the wordcount has gone up. And not by anything small. My last total, back on March 13th, was 150, 867 words. Now, the grand total (and, frankly, where it’s staying unless I’ve got some serious motivation) is:

164,917 words

I’ve created a monster. And the thing is- having just spent the last week solidly trudging through it… I know there isn’t really anything I can lose. It’s a wild, entertaining romp- it’s just also a terribly intricate entertaining romp, with stuff going on at almost every step of the way. Despite the increase in size, I’m still immensely proud of what I’ve done, and there’s no way I’m looking at this and going “Well, that’s enough for one lifetime”. Getting here may have taken longer than I expected, but now I’m here, I’m not going to stop. I have someone in publishing who’s interested in looking at it (admittedly, not for the next month, but publishing is always like that…), and after a short break and some subbing work next week, I’m going to finally decide what needs to be done next, and do it.

This is just the first step of the journey. I’ve no idea where it’s going to lead me, but I’m going there all the same…

Life related updates have been a little short recently– but, I felt it was important to record that I am actually, genuinely, definitely in the final stages of the novel. The point where the book goes from ‘pending project’ to ‘something I’ll need a very good reason to tinker with’ is not that far away. I’m currently going through the ‘final draft’ version of the book, checking my English, restructuring some of my habitually overcomplicated sentences, and running it through a spell checker. I’m up to chapter 9, and I”m doing very little else this week other than getting this novel finished. There’s a lot of pages to go before the end (I have to try and average two chapters a day), but it’s an odd feeling, finally getting it to a point where I know there’s nothing I can do about it. Then, of course, I enter the risky world of actually sending the thing out… but for now, a big celebration isn’t too far away.

Tick, tock, tick tock…

It’s possible that I might have just done all the structural alterations that I can to my novel. In short, now all I’ve got to do is try to do a fairly thorough rewrite, and get it to a state where every chapter is as good as (or at least approaching) the standard of the first four chapters. If I can do that, I’ll be happy. I just have the suspicious feeling that it’s going to be a very long way towards the end. At the least, though, I’m within reach.

It’ll all be over soon…