I just finished the first draft of a novel.

This is big for me - a major celebration, really - because I have about eleven false starts scattered over fifteen years.

I’m just going to sit with that for a minute. I’ve been trying to do this for fifteen years. I have a 70-page attempt circa 2006. Do you know how many things have happened to me and to the world since 2006? A LOT OF THINGS.

Turns out, all you need to do to finish is...keep going. Show up every(ish) day to have fun with the words and let the book show you what it wants to be. All while refusing to judge yourself or what lands on the page.

(Even if you have seven new and what-your-anxiety-brain-declares-to-be-better novel ideas along the way.)

I got off social media a few months ago, not totally sure why, but sure it needed to happen. I’m not a cyborg, so I peeked. But I did my best not to post and to give myself a break - at least until the first draft was finished.

Yesterday I wrote the last paragraph. Last night, we popped champagne and ate cheesy pasta.

(Turns out, all you need to do to make amazing pasta is drown the other ingredients in a sea of butter. To finish a novel, just refuse to quit. To make delicious pasta, just add a stick of butter. I’m learning all sorts of life lessons over here.)

It was really tempting to push past this milestone without recognizing it - a first draft isn’t a finished novel, after all. A finished novel isn’t an agent. An agent isn’t a publishing deal. A publishing deal isn’t a bestseller.

What? Settle down, brain.

Success is not the point. It would be a very welcome side effect, but the point is to write books. And when this one is done - really done, ready to be read by other humans done - there are seven more ideas waiting in the wings.

The process never ends. Which means we can’t ever fail - because we’re never done. There’s something extraordinary in that.

So here’s to stubbornly refusing to give up, long-awaited accomplishment, the utter impossibility of failure, and having fun every single day.