thank you for all the congratulatory squeals, dancing on the spot, bellowing down the phone etc. have finished and am currently undergoing final edit.
i've been feeling oddly ambivalent about having finished the draft now. when i wrote the last line, i prepared myself for elation, but it didn't happen. then i went into a bit of a low-nothingness. tried to identify cause. brain only came up with 'it's because your writing's shit'. re-read draft from beginning to end applying touch-ups as i went, and concluded that brain is paranoid. the draft's obviously not perfect, but it ain't crap either. a week later i feel better about having finished it. but, no celebrating yet - this is just the beginning.
writing for young adults class has us writing a novel extract as an assessment task, and i think i might have found another story. it's set in moto (my maternal grandmother's village in fiji) and it's about a little girl and her parents. i had actually pitched a whole different idea to class to start with, but it felt too alien. when i wrote the opening scene, the rest kind of came to me. i have a vague idea about what's happening in the novel, and it could either be about separation, discovery or a bit of both. it'll be different, but i haven't read anything like it yet.
i think that's a good sign.