Don’t forget to celebrate

Experience can bring many wonderful things, particularly when you’ve devoted years to a craft.

For instance, after spending eight years as an agent reading tens of thousands of queries and twenty plus years of writing and editing pitches, I can now crank out a pretty good two paragraph pitch in 5-10 minutes flat. (I can see the rotten tomatoes flying through the air in my direction.)

One of the drawbacks? You get used to some things. It becomes harder to see the mountain you’ve climbed as you get acclimated to that high altitude air.

I’ve gotten used to finishing projects, which is a nice problem to have. But there’s something I now often forget.

I have to remind myself to celebrate accomplishments and milestones.

The importance of celebrating

If you are reading this blog, you’ve chosen an extremely difficult vocation. Just from a time perspective, writing a novel is going to take you hundreds of hours. Minimum.

And that doesn’t include the psychic energy that goes into writing. Delving into trauma, life’s deepest and darkest questions, grappling with existential truths. The vulnerability of sharing something deeply personal with the world.

What do you have waiting for you on the other side of that? A whole lot of rejection. If you’re lucky. Even worse, you might be met with total silence. You might struggle to find a single reader for your efforts. It will likely not be met with the reception of your wildest dreams.

There’s really nothing about this process that’s easy. So when you reach a milestone like finishing a draft, getting an agent, or gasp, reaching publication day or hearing from an enthusiastic reader: you’ve got to celebrate.

Let it feel good. You and your mind and body need it.

This doesn’t get easier with experience

This is top of mind for me today because I just finished a draft of my new middle grade novel that’s polished enough that I can share it with other people! Woo!!! Yay!!! I’m forcing myself to be chipper in this paragraph, can you tell?! No writing milestone hangover in sight NO SIREE!

You might recall that I wrote a post just a few weeks ago about how one deals with writing milestone hangovers. I already found myself dusting it off last night in the midst of another deep writing milestone hangover. What in the heck did I say again? How do you do this?

What I realized is that I had yet again brushed past the present and started moving into the future. I skipped a step.

I used to celebrate every finished draft with a nice bottle of wine and let myself play a computer game (usually the latest entry in the Civilization series), because I never have time for those when I’m writing.

This time? When I finished my new MG novel, I immediately spent 5 minutes cranking out a pitch to send to my agent (Ack! More flying tomatoes!), I sent it out to a few friends and critique partners, and then was like… “Now what? What’s next?”

I started anticipating (the nice word for DREADING) the feedback I was going to receive. I turned my gaze immediately back to the manuscript, fearing that I was missing big issues. I never actually enjoyed the finishing part.

Celebrate good times come on

Now I’m slowing down a bit to spend some time letting the finishing part feel good.

I looked back at the early days of my writing journal for my new novel to try to appreciate how far I’d come building the mythology. My partner scheduled a sushi dinner for Saturday. I might try out the no-longer-new Zelda game or see what’s going on in Sid Meier’s Civilization land.

There aren’t many easy things to enjoy in the writing and publishing process. Finishing is one of them.

And when the more unexpected ones come along: celebrate them for all their worth.

Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!

For my best advice, check out my online classes, my guide to writing a novel and my guide to publishing a book.

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Art: The Sunday by Alexey Korzukhin