the end

69,506 words.
That's how many words it took to tell the story of Thistleswitch. At least, to tell it at first. I know I have plenty of rewriting and revising and editing to do now, which will whittle down or jack up the word count. But right now...69,506 words.

I can't quite comprehend that it's done. But it is. I made a list of the order of events back when Aries, Niko and Merry first reentered the Thistlethought forest. It talked about the tangle tree, the skyders, the dragon, the ending. But I never really felt like I would actually get to write all of those scenes. I didn't feel like I would ever actually get there.

But I did. I wrote all of those scenes, without skipping to them and leaving parts out of the middle of the story. Thistleswitch is a complete, beginning-middle-end story. I've never written a complete story before on my own.

My senior English teacher used to tease us crazy kids about how often we used the word "epic". "Wow, that was an epic party last night!" and "Did you see The Hangover? That movie is so epic!" It got on her nerves, because she said that what we considered epic wasn't really epic at all.

But I have to say...this feeling, right now...finishing a novel...

It's pretty dang epic.