Question not to ask a novelist: Are you finished yet?

“I finished my novel,” I announced with excitement.

My family sat around the dinner table staring at me, silent.

“Aren’t you happy for me?”

More silence. My husband looked at me sheepishly, trying to find words. “It’s just that we’ve heard this before.”

And he has. Several times. To be fair, this novel has been a twenty year project in the making. (I can hear the groans in the background.) If you’re just starting out, don’t worry, that doesn’t have to be you. And I hope it’s never me again. But often it depends on how much else you have going on in your life, how much time you can dedicate to writing. Slow and steady doesn’t always win the race, but often gets you to the finish line, at least. And for me, several times.

So how many times have I finished this novel?

Let me count the ways:

1. The end of the first draft—What writer can’t be excited about the end of that first draft? You’ve made it, you’ve pushed through the doubts, the mushy middle, the plodding plot, to at least get some sense of finale even though you know there will be more work ahead, you focus on that one moment: I did it! (And just to make it even more of a challenge, I wrote my first draft by hand. And no, typing it up did not constitute finishing a draft.)
2. I then applied to the Humber School for Writers and got accepted. I knew my draft needed a lot of work. I wanted to get through the whole novel, to see if it was worth continuing. So I edited like crazy, sending drafts to my mentor. I was on a race for time. Not only was there a time limit on my mentorship, I was pregnant. I wanted to have it in the bag before motherhood consumed my life. Although only a second draft, it still felt like a finish!
3. I worked on my notes from Humber while I had another child and moved to the country. I would edit with that for years before I finally said, I’m finished. There’s no more I’m going to do without professional advice. A first stage finish?
4. I sought out professional advice in the form of a substantive edit. Lots of positives, but lots of work to do, mostly on that plodding plot! I had to up the stakes, no more passive protagonist. So I rewrote the novel from scratch, twice. I did bring in bits and bobs from the former version, but I wanted a fresh take. I then melded all three together to provide a final draft. I knew it needed another read-through for a line edit, but there would be no more major plot changes. I knew I wasn’t finished, but still, a substantive finish was achieved.
5. Before I could get a line edit in, I won another substantive edit, so off it went. Taking those notes in mind—thankfully, no major plot changes—I worked on my line edit. And I just finished it. That’s what I’m excited about!

But the question remains, am I truly finished? Of course not! I have a few readers lined up, readers with some credentials—not just my friends. And there’s working on the pitch and query letter and synopsis. The novel is finished, but now I have to sell it. If I’m successful, I’m sure an agent and publisher will require still more edits.

A novel is never truly finished until it’s published and on the shelf and no more changes can be made. Or, you decide to leave it in a drawer. Then it is finished in a different way.

What keeps me going? Lots of encouragement. Even though there was much work to be done, I was met with positive encouragements as well as areas to work on. There was always more positive than negative, enough so that I kept thinking, if I just learn a little more.

I look on the past twenty years, not as a lesson in punishment, but as if I was doing my MFA part-time. I have learned so much along the way, met so many writers and friends, immersed myself in the world of story, and words and poetry. I can’t imagine my life without it.

So I will keep “finishing” my novel and celebrate the goal posts along the way. Because each “finish” represents a major milestone along the journey. We don’t just celebrate funerals, we celebrate the birthdays along the way. And each ending does bring another birth: a new story, or poem, a new version. The thing with creating is, it never ends!

Enjoy the writing, there’s nothing quite like it.