Celebrating Milestones

Writing isn’t easy. People will pick up a book and not realize the amount of work that went into creating it. The hours spent agonizing over every little detail of the book. The characters names, what they look like, where they live, what they are interested in and so much more. Writing is hard. And that deserves to be acknowledged.

When you are writing, create goals for yourself and celebrate them. When I’m working on a new novel, I don’t always have set in stone goals, but in my mind, I have general ideas of where I want to be and when. When you hit those goals, celebrate it. Drink a glass of wine. Go out with friends. Hype yourself up. Whatever works for you, do it. It doesn’t matter if your goal was to write five hundred words or five thousand words. If you hit it, celebrate. Let yourself be excited in that moment for how far you have come. No one else may recognize where you are as an achievement, but you still can.

When I hit two hundred pages in my novel, I got so excited. I was worried that I wouldn’t hit that mark, but I did and was huge for me. No one was there to share in that excitement, but that didn’t take the achievement away from me. I still hit two hundred words and it was still exciting.

I just finished the first draft of this novel. It isn’t great by any means, but it’s a complete story with words on pages. It’s finished and its mine. That is worth celebrating. I know I still have a long way to go with this story as series of edits begin, but for now, I am going to step back and be excited over the fact that the first draft is done and that I love it.

Over the past few weeks that I’ve been writing this novel, I have fallen deeply in love with these characters and their world. But I’m not done with them yet. There is so much more to learn about them and to grow them. The draft may be done, and a milestone may have been met, but this story is far from over.

So, my dear friends, whatever you are working on, remember to look not just at how far you have to go, but how far you have come as well because it is worth celebrating.

Happy writing!

-Cath