Novel Complete, or is it Breakdance?

Posted by Joel

Last night I sat down at about 7:30 and started writing. I wrote solidly until 10, where I reached the end of the book.

Hurray! I celebrated, and stood staring blankly at the wall. Could it be I finished? It felt weird, because this rewrite has been the most intensive. I havent' let mediocre scenes stay. I probably deleted a total of 50 full single-spaced eight and a half by eleven pages through the course of writing the last 200 pages of the story.

I still think I need to work on a few things (I don't think that feeling every goes away) especially with the feedback I've gotten from my reader group.

Today I was putting together the last segments to send out to the group when I came across a word. Breakdance. I stared at it, and a realization hit me.

First, some background. When I'm in the middle of a rewrite, I add the word breakdance as place holders. If I need to rework a scene, or I hadn't finished a particular scene, I'll type that word in there. It's easy when I open the document to search for 'Breakdance' and be taken to the areas I needed to work on. Sometimes I know what happens in a scene, but I'm just not feeling it, so I leave a breakdance where I left off, and continue on, skipping the scene. At one point I had 4 breakdance markers in the story. I finally worked through them all.

Or so I thought. I missed one! The scene is crucial, but it's a tough one so I decided to put it off while I finished the end of the book. Aw man! I guess I'm not done after all!

Strangely this didn't alarm me. I think I love the story and have no problem working through that scene. Strange...

Anyway, I don't think I have much to go before I'll be done!