A cat came knocking on the bedroom’s slider.
Papi the ginger blade was demanding entry back into the house.
I let him in and returned to bed. The time was 4 AM. I told myself to go back to sleep. My brain wouldn’t cooperate. Instead, I thought about going into surgery on Wednesday. I felt I was close to finishing the novel in progress. It could be done before the surgery if I have three good writing days. I wanted that. Then I ended up staying awake, writing the story in my head.
When I sat down at the coffee shop, I put those words down into the document and realized, the end.
I was inspired by the book, “Gravity’s Rainbow”. I’d read the book in the past and was just browsing, and came across some reference to it. Then I had an idea, and “Gravity’s Emotions” was begun.
Word can tell you some things about a doc. Tells me that this one was started July 19, 2024. 432 pages, 117,480 words. 9218 minutes of editing. Anyone who knows that a day has 1440 minutes knows that’s not a huge amount of time. Just 6.4 days if you do the math. 6.4 days if I’d worked 24/7.
As always, it feels a little weird to be finished. Bit sad. “Like a death in the family” a writer of fame once said.
I worry about it. Don’t know if the plot makes sense or if people will buy into the character. I fret over the ending is too pat.
I told myself when I began writing this thing, just get out of your own way and stay out of the way.
Now, with it ‘done’, at least in this phase of novel writing, I need to remind myself again: just get out of your own way.
Michael Seidel, writer 