things got serious after i finished chapter one-hundred. you're going to be a novelist in less than 1000 words, i told myself. i left two empty lines in the document and typed 'epilogue.' then the reality of it all hit me. i looked down at myself. my lack of colour coordination pierced me to the soul. years later, i did not want the most prevalent memory about the day i finished my first novel to be that my clothes clashed. i needed to think. i left, took a shower, and came back completely monochromatic. i ignored the fact that i was wearing polka dots and plaid... it was all green, and that's what mattered most.

in the end, i missed the ending of my own book. i was typing so fast that i went three sentences past it before i realised where i was. i'd expected fireworks to go off inside my head... so that at least the pain of the explosions would alert me to something important going on.

overall, i'm very disillusioned. i figured i'd be ecstatic. after all, it's about 130,000 words long and it took four and a half months to write. as of now, after six hours, i feel nothing. my cat has had more enjoyment over the fact that her owner is a novelist than the owner herself has.

but i'm going to do a quaint, inefficient little f7 edit before sending the thing off to createspace to collect my nano winner's prize of a free print copy. then i am not allowed to touch the thing for a month. at the moment, i could care less if i didn't touch the thing for years, but i suppose its rough hewn quality will grate on my perfectionist nature and i'll attack it with my quill one of these days. either that, or the fear of me dying and having that left as my commitment to the high sphere of novelling... *shudder*