In October of 2009, I emailed my friend Melissa MacPhee the first few chapters of a project I was working on. An idea for a story came to my mind and I wrote it down, thinking it might be interesting to develop. She responded with exuberant enthusiasm, telling me she thought it was amazing and demanding more pages.
For over five years, I slowly sent pieces of this story to her. Sometimes months would go between updates. At one point, over a year. There were times I was convinced I would never finish it, and good riddance, because it was probably dreadful. And there were other times when I had hope that maybe it was worthwhile. In the midst of all that, I knew I wanted to just tell the story, because it was a story I wanted to read. That kept me going.
But what mostly kept me going were the insistent, nagging texts, comments, and in person pestering of my one faithful reader, who wanted me to finish the story.
Tonight, 40 chapters and 90k words later, I wrote "The End". Ahead of me is the dreaded 2nd draft, revisions, re-writes, edits, and possibly 3rd and 4th drafts. But I completed the story, and so the first step is done.
Thank you, friend, for convincing me to keep going. The story, rough and messy as it currently is, wouldn't exist without you.
