An ode to my first novel.

I started writing this novel on April 17, 2015. I only know that because I just looked, I wanted to know how long I have been working on this dang thing. It was slow going in the beginning, because it was nearing the end of the school year, and I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with it. Like, I wanted to write the book, but how? How does someone just sit down and pound out 100,000 words, coherent words, and string them together to make sentences and chapters? That's not even possible!!!

Then in the summer, I kind of hit my stride. I was spending eight hours a day in a classroom, basically just sitting there, so I used the time to write. And when I say write, I mean physically writing. I have an entire notebook full from all the things I wrote last summer just sitting in my nightstand, waiting to either be burned, or put up in a museum. (side note: carrying a notebook with Taylor Swift's on it around a high school does not make you feel as cool as you probably think it should). And then, of course, school started again, and then we got busy and then the move...just a lot of things that were more important than writing. So for a long time it just seemed like a never-ending project.

But I finished it today.

I know it needs to be edited and read by other people and re-edited and maybe it won't go anywhere. But I freaking wrote a book. I feel like for a person to write a book, they have a ton of feelings and words to put on paper, and I thought I had a lot of both those things, but think about people who write more than even five or ten books! That's so crazy! And so time-consuming and imagination consuming...I guess I have a lot more respect for the process now that I have finished mine.

Anyway. I wanted to get all these thoughts out, because writing this book has been sort of therapeutic for me. There were days that it left me feeling sad and drained, and there were days that I was elated after spending hours on a certain scene. I keep telling people that I couldn't wait to finish it, because all I wanted to do was print it off and burn it. And now it's done and I am thoroughly looking forward to roasting a marshmallow over the pages.

I'm not going to say what it's about, you can find out if it ever gets published, but I don't even care about that. When I was little, it was always a goal of mine to write a book, and now I can say that I did it. It took me just over a year, but it's done.