Draft Two: Finished

The horror story I've spent the last month wrangling is finished. I may or may not get some feedback on it still, but the hardest part is done: the story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. My first reader -- that (patient and long-suffering) guy I married -- has given me feedback, which I've incorporated. And I've read through the whole thing a dozen more times to fix a few typos and inconsistencies.

I'm sure there are more nit-picks left to fix. I've been staring at the damn thing so long the lines blur together. Tomorrow I'll read it aloud again and then let it sit. With hope, none of the beta readers will bring up major plot problems, but I'll deal with those as they come.

The final count was 7,800 words, which is 42 pages double-spaced in 12 point Courier font. The process for this story was weird. I had the idea mid-November and set it aside because I was working on NaNoWriMo, though I did manage to write the first 1,000 words in between projects. I started writing the story for real about the second week of December, although some days I could only eke out 150 words max.

But here I am and I have finished. Just in time for the new year.

Hallelujah.