Early this morning, around the strike of 2, I finally did it.

3 years.
Countless restarts and redirects.
Thousands of draft pages.
28 chapters.
240 pages.
Just under 67,000 words.

I finished it.

The next great American novel is complete!

Considering I’m a huge procrastinator and I hardly ever finish anything I start, this is like the most amazing thing I’ve ever done. It’s like when Alex and I climbed Mt. Elbert in 2003. Lots of pain and anguish, 3 false summits, deprived of oxygen and water, threatened by lightning, feeling like I just couldn’t take another step, and just when I was ready to give up, there it was, as if it had been waiting for us from the moment we took our first step up the rocky path – the summit.

The story I wrote about that hike was aptly titled “Mt. Elbert: I Laughed, I Cried, I Peed On My Shoes” – not unlike the experience of writing a novel. But the important thing is that I didn’t give up, and finally, there it was, as if it had been waiting for me from the moment I typed the first sentence – the summit!

*Stands up and does the corny white-boy cabbage patch dance*

Of course, in the world of publishing, this is just the basecamp summit, because edits and rewrites, searching for an agent, landing said agent, selling to a publisher, and actually getting the book on the shelves are the summits that still lie ahead and, like Everest, 1 in 12 climbers who attempt the final ascent die in the process.

But it’s totally worth it, dude.