The other night, I finished writing a novel.* It may be somewhat related to the Big News from last post…

*(I should differentiate this from actually finishing the book. There’s still editing and such.)

This is by no means a new experience for me. I’ve written many books, and I’ve completed most of them. But it’s still a pretty significant moment.

It’s hard to describe how it feels to finish writing a novel. I don’t have anything else in my body of experience that’s analogous to it.

There’s a certain bittersweet quality to it. It’s like saying goodbye to old friends and not knowing if you’ll ever see them again. I don’t know if I’ll write about these characters again.

But there’s also a certain pleasure in leaving them on a high note, having written a climax with them all at their most badass and heroic — or badass and ruthless, in the case of villains.

There’s also a great deal of relief. Which is not to say that writing a book is entirely an ordeal. This one, in particular, was probably more fun for me to write than anything I’ve done previously.

But having an idea for a novel is like having a bad itch that you can’t scratch. It’s always at the back of your mind, demanding to be written. The scenes burn in your mind for months, and the only way to be free of them is to write them.

I’ve been working on this book since last July, and I had pretty much the whole plot planned out from the beginning, so these scenes have been burning in my thoughts for a long time.

It’s a tremendous relief to finally scratch that itch.

Aside from relief, I think what I mostly feel after finishing this book is emotional exhaustion. It’s not my place to comment on the quality of my own work, but I found this book had more of an emotional impact on me personally than anything else I’ve written to date.

There were many scenes that hit me so hard I had to take a break after writing them to recover. There were also times where I’d become so caught up in the story that I’d end up staying up to 3AM, writing until my fingers were sore — I still type with only two fingers.

This is very out of character for me. I may not like sleep, but I don’t like being exhausted, either, and I disrupt my schedule for nothing.

Now, I’m just going to take a break for a while and focus on promoting the World Spectrum books and my work as a freelancer.

At long last, it’s over. I’m finished.

In other news…

My latest article at WhatMMO is Top 8 World of Warcraft Memes. Because we could all use more Saurfang facts in our lives.