It's my birthday and I did it. I finished the novel.

What's next for me?

Hi all,

A short letter today. For those of you who have been following along in my novel-writing journey, I just wanted to pop into your inbox to say: I did it!

At 12:26pm PT today, I stopped typing at word number 100,167. That closes the book (pun intended) on draft one of my post-apocalyptic science fiction novel. The draft is sitting at 401 pages over 40 chapters. Over 43,000 of those words were written in the last three weeks.

When I took the big risk of quitting my job at a big law firm in March of this year, I set the goal of finishing draft one of my novel by today as a birthday present to myself. I was scared of what was going to come of my insane-sounding career pivot and knew I needed a solid win to give me the confidence to keep going.

And I have delivered on the promise I made to myself. It’s hard to do the self-love thing, but today I’m giving myself a big hug and a high-five.

There’s a beginning, middle, and end. That’s all I can promise about the quality of this draft. But that’s still more than I had six months ago.

Before I leave you, I just want to take this opportunity *gets on stage behind podium* to thank my husband for indulging in my wacky trial-lawyer-to-novelist career pivot, my son for staying healthy enough to attend daycare this month so that I could write, my in-laws and parents for accepting my 180 degree turnaround in career identity, and to all you, my dear Write on Track readers, for cheering me on in this journey.

I would be remiss to not mention *cue Oscars walk-off music while I clutch the podium* Shayne Terry, whose publication I shamelessly binged these last couple weeks as inspiration to keep going, and the lovely ladies of #AmWriting and TSNOTYAW, who made me feel like even the worst novel drafts can be improved with effort and dedication.

Now for the daunting task of turning this clumsy noodle of a first draft into something that people will someday hopefully want to read: it’s time to shift gears into editing mode.

But first I’m going to take a vacation from this novel. It’s been heavy y’all and I need to walk away for a minute.

For the next couple weeks, I plan to hang out on Substack, read books, and do some journaling. I might spend time reflecting on how I got from 0 to 100,000 in seven months. Maybe there will be some interesting lessons there for future drafts and writing projects.

Yay for me and for us and for writers everywhere. If you’re in the midst of a big creative project, I’m cheering you on. You can this.

Noor