"And that's all there is. There isn't any more."

From my limited, biased and slightly snarky point of view, it seems to me that almost every young writer out there refers to the process of writing a book as "a journey."  Now, just because almost everybody does it does not make a thing undesirable--but it does annoy me just a tad when I see the word "journey" used to describe novel-writing.  Because that word is used to describe everything else under all nine planets (yes, there are nine--in my book, anyways.  Quit with the size discrimination, astronomers.).  As an alternative, I suggest "crazy-wild road trip" instead of "journey."  It packs a bigger punch.

Because really, writing a novel IS a crazy-wild road trip.  At least, mine was.  Now, Only a Novel isn't exactly the most adventurous, suspenseful, spinning-off-the-shoulder, edge-of-your-seat story out there (that's my sister's genre, not mine) but that doesn't mean I didn't have an exciting time writing it.  For the first time, characters that I had invented seemed incredibly real to me. I found myself dreaming about them, thinking about them almost constantly, imagining how they'd react in various situations.  They were the driving force behind my story, and believe me, they drove recklessly.  (Is anyone else enjoying all these road trip puns? No?  Just me?  You people have no sense of humor.)

At any rate, lovely fellow road-trippers, I finished my novel.

Clocking in at three hundred and fourteen pages, thirty-four chapters and 88,245 words (what a nice round number!), Only a Novel is finally complete.

And now I'm feeling that funny sort of happy-sad mixture of emotions.  On the one hand, I'm thrilled to have written an entire story, a tale of my own spinning featuring characters of my own creation.  But on the other hand, it's actually hard to say goodbye to those characters, to know that their story has been told and is now over.

Believe me, I got pretty close to them over the last eight months.  Are writers allowed to play favorites?  I don't care-- I favorited with reckless abandon, and this author's pet was unquestionably the hero of my story. Rodney Edgerton Burke, the carriage driver and stable hand who reads Dickens after work popped into my head one day in November when I realized that my novel had featured only female characters thus far.  I needed a MMC, and I needed him fast-- so I plucked the name Rodney off my Favorite Boy Names List, pasted Roger Hamley's face onto the name and plopped him down in the Crimp family's garden with a trowel in his left hand and a garden toad in his right.  And thus my favorite character of all time was born.

The Many Faces of Rodney.  (Extra-special hugs and chocolate-covered strawberries must go to my dearest Tween, who generously screencapped all the above pictures of Roger Rodney and sent them to me as a surprise.)

Probably my protagonist should have been my second favorite character at least, since she didn't make the top spot on the list, but the fact is that she has to take third place.  Lavinia Solange Vivian Bancroft, an extremely wealthy, beautiful young socialite and the FMC's best friend, is second in my estimation and I'm not sorry for it.  Lavinia was one of the very first characters I created, and I went through various stages of loving her and hating her.  She's a snob at times, but a lovable snob, and any scene was immediately made more fun to write if she was in it.  And when my book becomes famous and the BBC comes clamoring for the miniseries rights (heeheehee), I shall sell them the rights on one condition: Romola Garai must play Lavinia, for she simply IS Lavinia and no two ways about it.

Much gratitude to Miss Laurie for taking all these screencaps, and for
sending them to my Twinnie, who in turn sent them to me. :)

Last and, unfortunately, least in the top three is Elizabeth Sophia Markette, my protagonist.  I really do love her.  Just not quite as much as Those Two Up Above.   (You can read more about her here.)  She's a lot like me in some ways, and quite different from me in others, but I've grown quite close to her over the last eight months and I like her tremendously.

What would I do without my Tween?  Melody did most of these screencaps for me, again. :)

And now I've come to the end, and... well... it's time to say goodbye to this story.  Con te partiro... (and that's about all I know of the lyrics to that song despite having heard it several hundred times.  Heehee.)  Unless, of course, I decide to write a sequel someday.  But right now, I'm just luxuriating in the whole I've-actually-completed-this-project feeling.

It's quite delicious, really.