And the last word is...

"El."  The first draft of SotO is complete. 20k short of my goal, it sits on my word processor as 83, 141 words.  I feel a bit tingly, a bit strange.  This day has been 18 years in the making.  I honestly never expected to actually finish the story.  But the villain is defeated, the kingdom is saved, and the twist at the end has twisted itself entirely.  Suddenly I'm flooded with fear.  Fear, I guess, of the unknown.  All my worrying before was always answered by Boyfriend thus "Just finish it first, and then we'll worry about that."  I have finished it. So there.  I sat down this morning to see how far I got, and wrote ten hours straight for almost ten thousands words.  It's not nearly complete, and I have ideas already to shift (no pun intended) things around in editing.  But I can say I have written the story from beginning to end.  It's done. DONE!

Tomorrow I will edit 20 minute's worth of the first chapter for the KFJC reading on Wednesday morning.  I spent some time today building a soundbed playlist from the Burning Crusade soundtrack.  It seemed moody enough to work well with the text, although there are parts I wish wouldn't have any music behind them at all.

In a few hours I pick up Boyfriend from the airport.  It will be an interesting welcome home gift.  Shame I don't trust the business center printer enough to print me out a copy.  Somehow I don't think their overused cartridge will last for 219 single-spaced pages.