So I Have This Pile of Paper...

..that formerly spent its life as twenty or so chapters in little separate files in my computer. Each file had a name, but no numbers because I am not organized enough to either A: outline a whole book, or 2) follow an outline even if I did. So I spent just over an hour the other day figuring out which ones went where and hitting "Copy-Paste" over and over and over and over until they were all tucked nicely onto one big document· Then I hit "Print". Then I changed the ink cartridge.

And now, ta da! I have a manuscript.

*giggle*

230 pages, 88881 words of original crap straight from my noggin.

I won't lie to you: I'm excited as a pig in shit.

I also won't lie to when I tell you not to get too excited yourself if you're one of the wonderful and supportive people who have heard me going on and on about this sucker for the last 3 years (especially my first and favorite blog commentator: CJ. Thanks, dude. You were there from the beginning and you didn't even know it. Just having one person want to read my blog helped me convince myself that I should try putting words somewhere else too). It's not done yet, not by a long shot. This is only the rough draft; the spew of my subconscious trying to tell a story that I think is fairly good, maybe even a concept that is important, but it still needs a lot of work.

And the best part of this for me?

I'm excited to do that work. I'm chomping at the bit so hard to get to work fixing and adding and backfilling and cutting the crap that I can hardly put the thing down long enough to type this. Or go to Office Max to have it three-hole-drilled so I can put it into a binder so I'm not trying to keep track of 115 pieces of paper. My organizational skills just aren't up for that.

It's good to be excited about the revision, because to be honest getting the rough draft out of me was like trying to get a toddler to do something. Didn't wanna! Might be scary! Might not be any good! The only saving grace I had was the brains to join a writers' group that meets every two weeks. That way I had to have something ready, most of the time. There were dry spells where I didn't take anything. There was a period of about a year in which I was writing short stories instead, hoping to hone my skills. (And avoid the scary.) But I finally took a deep breath and plunged. I wrote. I didn't worry that it wasn't coming out perfectly, I didn't worry if I suddenly had an idea that hadn't been properly set up in previous chapters, I didn't care that it was bare-bones with very little sensory detail. I just spewed. And it felt really really good.

So now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go read and clean up some spew.

Thanks for your indulgence of my dorky excitement, I know I'm not the first person to have done this. This is not really that big of a deal, right? I mean, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone who tells you they've written a book nowadays.

But it's my first one, and I'm going to revel in it for now. I'm still not comfortable calling myself an "author", and I have no illusions that I'm going to get published immediately upon querying, but, yeah: I wrote a book.

Look! I writerd a book!

(And for those of you who have so nicely asked to see some of it, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait. Due to some of the tricky language in MySpace's "terms of use", I don't feel good about posting it here. There's all sorts of tricky lawyer-types who might try to wrangle some rights of first run bullcrap. If you really want to read some of it, let me know and I'll send you some. Maybe. If I don't chicken out. Thanks again.)