And....Done!

Ah, the two sweetest words in the English language - The End! I got to type those this afternoon and I feel like exhaled for the first time since late August.

The stats:

Days it took to complete first draft: 71
Length of first draft: 84,704 words
Average words per day: 1,193
Days skipped: 0
Days that I wanted to skip: 68
Coffee consumed: 177.5 large ones
Head-Desk sighs of frustration: countless
Number of times Naive by The Kooks was listened to: 234.3
Emergency email/texts to my support system (aka Daisy Whitney): 45 (approx)
Number of those occurring after midnight: a lot

At the end of the process, this is what the back of my sad, worn notebook looks like, full of food stains and coffee splotches:



And this is the infamous cork board, all filled up and happy:


So what's next? Well, tonight I'm going to sit down and watch my DVR'd episodes of Modern Family, Big Bang Theory and Hoarders. Tomorrow, I'm going to open the file to page 1 and start all over again, taking out the horrible parts and adding in some (hopeful) brilliance. If past experience is any guide, I'll probably take out several thousand words, but end up with about 10k more than I have now. Chapters will get switched around, threads will be deleted and expanded and characters may or may not survive to the final draft.

Yeah, in other words, the hard work has just begun.