We finished the novel this morning.

All day long I've been trying to think of something clever or profound to say but all my inspiration seems to have vanished into the double-spaces I placed between the lines -- my traditional final action. Once a manuscript is double-spaced it's ready to go out in public.

Completing a manuscript is a letdown. The process always ends with a whimper of confirming facts, proofreading, spell checking, and formatting, All a far cry from the excitement of making the story up and wrestling it onto the monitor.

Then too, a book isn't truly complete until it has an audience. A finished manuscript still needs to be sold. And if an editor does buy it, then it will suddenly no longer be finished. There will be rewriting and tweaking.

Maybe that's why we're not celebrating our finishing the book, because we hope we're not really finished.

And then too there's the problem, after months of concentrating on a project -- what next? Well, I guess, most likely, I'll write something else.