THE END.

There's something very rewarding about writing "THE END." It's all about that moment when you know the piece you're writing is ESSENTIALLY DONE. The story has been put down on paper from beginning to end and it's readable. It may need some polishing and an additional round of revisions but it's essentially done. It's also the point when you have to make decisions about how much more needs to be done so that the work on it is FINISHED. Perhaps a piece of writing is never truly finished but continuous editing and revision is not something I could easily get used to. I need to be able to say something is FINISHED and move on to something else. It doesn't have to be perfect to be FINISHED.

I wrote "THE END" earlier this week when I completed the first round of revisions to the didactic novel I've been writing for the past 6 months. It felt really nice to get to that point. I am now entering unfamiliar territory since this is the first time I manage to complete a first round of revisions and still be interested in the manuscript. I'm looking at all my notes trying to figure out how to prioritize revisions.

What I really need now is to create the right incentives to complete the entire process. I know I'll complete the second round of revisions. I might get a little lazy and find excuses for calling it FINISHED sooner rather than later but I'll get to the point where I can call it FINISHED.

The real question is whether I'll actually ask anyone to read it and what to do with it once it is FINISHED. I don't think the process will really be completed if I just shelve it as a FINISHED project and never get it out for others to read.

This is how this blog is going to help me create the incentives to complete the process: The more I write about it here -- not just the writing process but the novel itself -- the more I build the necessary confidence to do something with it (... have someone read it).

So... here is a piece of information: The manuscript is titled "Learning Log -- A Didactic Novel about Knowledge Management, version 1.0". The "version 1.0" might suggest that I would consider making revisions to turn it into version 1.5 or 2.0. It's a possibility but mostly the "version 1.0" is there to indicate that while it is finished (it's not a beta), I still see the project as an experiment to learn from and not necessarily something that needs to be perfect. {a not so subtle attempt at lowering expectations}

Didactic Novel Update

Let's keep it short and simple. The novel has three parts (beginning, middle, end). I'm in the middle of revisions to the middle part. That makes it a tough spot to be in. It's slowing down in terms of progress, I've managed to get off the train a couple of times in terms of sticking to the writing routine, but I'm still making progress. More importantly, I'm still enjoying the process. At this point, I'm reminding myself that whether anyone will ever read it is irrelevant. No one will indeed ever read it if I don't manage to finish it.

(Note: Zemanta makes it so easy to create a list of links to my previous posts related to this topic. I really like it.)

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