Cheers To Me - #MFRWauthor

Happy Friday y'all! I missed last week's #MFRWauthor blog hop. I've been spending more time in #editinghell trying to prepare my first ever manuscript for submission. The struggle is real as editing is not fun for me and I'm ready to be done with it.

That coupled with the fact that last week was spring break for my boys, I was not in my right mind. So, since I am in the middle of #editinghell, I'm not in the best place to talk about celebrating finishing a project, but gonna go for it.

How do I celebrate? I didn't really have a special way. Or didn't. I can't remember where I first saw it, but there's this thing called Writer's Tears Whiskey. After learning of its existence, I set out to find it, only none of the liquor stores here carried it.

My delightful first born, a.k.a The Girl managed to order it for me for Christmas. It came as a complete gift set, the bottle with two tumblers with tear drops on them. Considering the time, effort, and in some cases actual tears that go into my projects, I loved the symbolic name.

Now, I'm not much of a hard liquor drinker. I'm a wine gal mostly, occasionally I'll have a glass of Bailey's, but really that's it. However, after getting this, I told myself I would have a celebratory drink after I completed each first draft. It is now my new 'routine'.

January 10th I got to have my first drink. I completed my first project of the year (the one I'm currently editing). It was supposed to be an erotic novella, that has turned more into a short novel after the three (now four) round of edits. I'm suspecting I'll wind up around 52k by the time I'm done give or take. For reference, that's adding 10k in additional new words as the story got fleshed out more and the subplot took on more importance than I had originally anticipated based on CP feedback.

March 30th I had my second after I completed my first ever novelette. Even after edits, it should still remain firmly in novelette territory as it's currently sitting at 16k. Even I can't can't that much more. To ensure this, I kept the plot much more simplistic to fit the word count.

I'm proud that I've managed to complete 2 projects already this year, because I am an #turtlewriter. Project 1 I did start at the end of last year, but still I was happy putting out one book per year and I'll have my goal beat. Plus these two showed me that I CAN manage to write a complete story in under 100k LOL. Seriously I'm wordy.

That's it. How I celebrate publishing a book is different and that's a post for another time. How do you celebrate finishing a first draft? Check out the other authors on the hop to see how they enjoy that 'the end' moment.

Until next time
~Meka