It’s a term that’s always relative, isn’t it? Being “finished” with something — especially for writers. How finished is finished? Even now, a week after I hacked, slashed, and rewrote the final chapter in my Work in Progress, I’m reluctant to say I’m finished. In one definitional sense I am (the edited, cleaned-up, polished rewrite is DONE!), but in others, I’m still working.

Since I “finished” the rewrite, I’ve been looking to cut scenes, unnecessary words and phrases, and redundancy. Thankfully, the slicing has been going well and mercilessly. I will miss a lot but I’m not too concerned about that at this point. After my betas read it, I’ll go through again (hastily! Speedily! Remarkably quickly!) and… well. At that point Things Will Happen. Yes, indeed.

It’s been hard to want to tear myself away from working to even think about blogging. (I apologize for the gap here!) I’ve tried to supplement with occasional Twitter comments, but I even forget to update  (and check) Twitter — and Twitter is Twitter. Even when I stare at the WiP (which is still “in progress” as far as I’m concerned for now) and I don’t want to work on/in it, I still do something else involving writing. I write notes for future projects, I fiddle around with reference documents, I read or re-read something else. I’m no longer in the habit to blog. (Bad Erin!) Then, when I’m not working, I’m catching up on all of the other life essentials I consistently neglect, which is hardly different from anyone else who gets sucked into their work.

(One of said life essentials is now appeasing my husband by watching one episode of Battlestar Galactica a night. His preference would probably be a non-stop marathon, but we’ve compromised. Neither of us has seen BSG and considering I regularly quote Star Wars and we are both unrepentant geeks, watching BSG is one of those “It’s about darned time!” experiences we can no longer avoid. We’re still early in Season One [be dears and don't spoil anything!] and already Starbuck has filled a bit more of the complex, ass-kicking female character void in my soul. That, and where has Tricia Helfer been all of my life?! I am straight and married — but damn.)

The next steps are to finish my last scan of the document, pass it on to the next sets of eyes, then start the business end of things. This isn’t my first novel by any stretch, but it’s the first one I’m going to query. I’m both excited and terrified about that. Now that I have the entirety of the story written in a final form I love (…and tentative sequels mapped? AH!) I am looking forward to 2010 with a bit more enthusiasm and fervor than I did a month ago.

Good things are going to happen. My cheeky optimism says so.