What It Feels Like to Finish a Writing Project

Journal entry upon finishing writing my latest novel. October 2024THE FINISHING FEELINGS

It really is something, the feelings I get when a writing project is finished. That said, I’m sure there are many of you who have that feeling that a piece of writing is never really finished! I have that feeling too! Especially with poetry. Depending on the size and scope of the writing project, the feelings of completion can vary.

If I’m writing a poem (or three) for a submission that has a theme, then it feels really great when the poems are done to the point of me editing them over and over before the deadline…and that deadline is the Grand Finishing Master for me. It feels good to write something based on a call or submission, edit it and then submit it. I feel a bit more light bursting between my cells…I get a whoosh of hope that the piece will be published, and then I write the submission info in my submission spreadsheet. At that point, that particular edition of the poetry is ‘finished’ – sent off into the ether for someone to read and, hopefully, connect with enough that they say ‘yes’ to publishing it.

A poem is never really finished. I’ve even edited poems in my published books (like right on the page!) because, say reading it out so many times makes me want to change it or perhaps I don’t feel connected to a line or stanza, so I’ll just not read it. So the feelings of completion for poetry are sliding…shifting, and I like the kind of…freestyle-ing reality of changing a word or a line even in the moment, on the page at a reading. Also, sometimes there are typos and/or factual issues. Like, I have this poem that I used to read at pretty much every reading, and I mixed up a duct with a eavestrough. How embarrassing. But thankfully, someone in the audience pointed it out to me. Now, I don’t read that poem anymore – too many mistakes in it!

I’m in the habit now of editing poems that I’ve submitted but that have been rejected. In this case, a poem can have many lives! I enjoy this experience of dashing a newness into a piece each time I face it before I resubmit. There’s a feeling of success, of pride, of hope, and of purpose when I get a poem in a state for submission. But poems are like…themselves, hopes that I put into the world, so when writing and submitting, I mostly feel positive emotions. Yes, I will admit to submitting poems that I know could have been edited more…that I was very unsure about as I hit ‘send’…but even those pieces were examples of a finished project sent out into the world. Writing a poem-a-day in 2021 (I think it was!), was a very unique practice in swift finishing. I committed to writing and sharing a poem every day (I wrote 365 poems!), so there really wasn’t time for finagling. It was a very powerful exercise. One that I think about doing again quite often.

But, finishing a poem feels different than finishing a novel. A novel is just soooo much bigger! It takes literally years (or months and months) to write, and there’s, for me anyway, much more ‘work’ to do. Ideas themselves may begin as a line or an image or even a visualized character I see in my movie-mind, but they get to grow and path (making this a verb today!) and, goddess, is it ever a major challenge for all my writing skills, for my patience, for my body…for my confidence as it waxes and wanes through the writing.

When I was 12, I started writing a novel. I wrote in fat cursive in a small, red journal with birds all over it. Each chapter was about four pages long, but writing these four pages felt like four forevers. The story was about a young girl who saw a young boy at Niagara Falls. Two eager-to-love kids catching eyes in a swarm of moving people at one of the Wonders of the World (do these even exist anymore?!).

Niagara Falls!

It was based on a real-life experience I’d had at Niagara Falls. There was a boy in the crowd. We’d locked eyes. I’d felt a connection and told myself ‘he was The One!’ – but what was his name? Where was he from? Would I ever see him again? I built a story around my yearning for a boyfriend…and because I knew then that I was a writer, I wrote and wrote and wrote, filling the thin pages of that red journal with the story of ‘what if’ between me and the mystery boy. I didn’t finish that novel. And there were many others that I’d started and didn’t finish during the ages of 12-to-20.

Another novel, a hard-boiled detective type, I started in grade four. I was able to use the…wait for it…Commodore 64 in our brand-new computer lab that I had the pleasure of ‘loading up’ each morning before school. I remember it was in a small classroom off the library, this lab. Two rows of back-to-bulky-back Commodore 64 computers. Each one had a floppy disc that I had to use to load the program (I think?) that would make the hulky machine run.

The Commodore 64!

It took me a good half hour to get them all loaded, but alas, the payment was that I could use the machine to write my novel during recesses! What? Do you understand my addiction to the clackety keyboard now? Oh, how divine it was typing away and pretending I was a ‘real writer’.

The clackety-keyboard. Yes, please. The floppy disk family!

The other part of the deal was that I had to show my fourth grade teacher what I was writing. I put it off for as long as I could…but then I had to show him. I have a vague memory of printing it off on the dot-matrix printer in the lab…

Remember this?!! Having to rip the dotted edges off and the perforations never worked well!!!

…and then handing it in to my teacher before lunch recess. When I came back, he called me to his desk, his round cheeks red like forbidden apples. “Vanessa,” he said, “This is very inappropriate writing for someone your age.” Then it was my turn to blush, but there was pride in my apples. “Murder. Smoking. Adults doing adult things…” He wagged the pages at me. “Please don’t leave this out. Take it home.”

I took the pages, giddy inside, because although he reprimanded me, and told me to take the pages home…he didn’t tell me to stop writing. After that, he’d ask me how my story was coming along, and I’d say great…and that was the end of it. I didn’t finish that murder-mystery, complete with a sassy, red-lipped jealous wife and her dead-beat, cheating husband and his lover maid…and the trench-coat wearing, tilted Fedora-headed, hard-boiled male detective whose job it was to solve the case without falling in love with the jealous wife…I hadn’t even read any hard-boiled novels at that point in my reading life!

Looking back, I realize that I was writing then with a freedom…an abandon…a constant surge of joyful release that I’ve been trying to recover…so when I wrote fiendishly all last year in an effort to complete a second draft (after a very thorough outline) of my YA novel, it truly felt outstanding to make my personal deadlines, and have it completed and ready for beta-readers by the end of the year.

I’ve finished three feature-length screenplays, and four (including this current one!) novels (all Young Adult!) at this point in my career. Each time I completed a project I felt elation, exhaustion, excitement…hope. Two of the four novels, I’ve submitted to agents and/or novel contests. I came very close to getting an agent for one of them…but in the end it didn’t work out. But, I have that novel in my back pocket, and I’ll definitely submit it again at some point (after another quick edit!). I used to submit a screenplay to a big contest once a year…but that was when I was in university and convinced I was on my way to Hollywood to work with Tom Cruise.

I believe it is a very special and necessary part of the writing process to acknowledge and celebrate when you’ve competed a major writing project. Be it a whoop-and-whoot in your office followed by dancing a jig or eating a small cake or sleeping for three days straight…it’s an important part of the creative process to acknowledge the greatness of what you’ve achieved. It is a feat to complete a manuscript!

Allow the dreams of what will come to flourish. Envision your novel adapted into an award-winning film starring your favourite actors. (You know you think about this when you’re writing!) Let hope sit on your heart for days after and feel the power of passionate accomplishment. Because, my friend, let me tell you, you’ll need it for the next phase of the process. At this point, the book is wombed in your passion, hope and dreams. Feel that. Love that. Celebrate that!