Am I allowed to admit to sheer, stomach-dropping-out-of-shoes terror? Or does that ruin my street cred? (Wait: I had street cred?) All I’ll admit to, in that case, is brain malfunction after overuse. Yes, that will suffice.

I finish finished the work in progress’s final draft today, meaning all of the last niggling edits have been made. The baby is done. Past due to my overly obsessive brain, but there we go. DONE. It even has a title — even though I think it will forever be known in my subconscious by its WiP title. (I hate titling things.) It’s like referring to your friend as Ellie all the time, then someone calls her Elizabeth and your reaction is stunned recognition: Oh, right, that is your whole name, isn’t it? Huh. Just like mytitle. The proper name of a much more casually nicknamed intimate friend.

My brain also hurts from query editing and revising. Holy goats. I haven’t had an assignment so demanding of my mental faculties since my thesis. Condensing tens of thousands of sweat-and-tears words to… two hundred? Less? By golly, it’s near perfect. (Or, well, considering my standards, close enough to do its job. Right? That’s the point; the query isn’t the end, it’s the beginning.)

Speaking of beginnings, I’m going to admit to that terror after all. I’m about to jump off the cliff and query. So many years of writing so many books and this is the first official leap — the first time I’ve wanted to make it, felt it was right enough.

Let’s hope I can fly.