The first/rough draft of my novel is DONE! *pops champagne!*
It clocks in at just over 93,000 words. I'm estimating that second and third drafts will add a good 35,000-40,000 to it. But the skeleton and all the major scenes are there.
To be honest, I'm absolutely flabbergasted at how the thing ended. I'm happy that there is no set up for any sort of sequel, though. All through the last 20 k I was afraid my brain was going to take the easy path and leave an out. Nope.
Forcing myself to bang out 2000 or more words a day focused on a single story was an interesting experience and it taught me a lot about how my brain worked:
My brain is a sneaky, seditious, rebellious asshole.
For example, three times in the writing process I found myself thousands of words into completely unrelated short fiction. I generally didn't realize this until I was past the point of no return. While this annoyed me by slowing the novel-writing down, I must admit that all three stories are pretty damn good. They're also things I would never have written conciously and without the nebulous atmosphere of the novel in progress and its many strange themes and characters.
The longest (and best, IMO) veers scarily close to erotic fantasy. It would be erotic fantasy in fact, if not for the fact that I refuse to write sex scenes. Instead, The Queen Of Summer is something much better: a tale of loyalty, a paen to the wild summers of my youth, and a tribute to young people defying authority in an organic, deeply felt, utterly unplanned manner. Stylistically, it may be the best thing I've ever written.
The other two are more traditional horror stories. While I consider both clever, they'll be tossed to the back of the pile for polishing and tweaking.
While I may never conciously sit down to write another novel (the process, for the most part, was maddening. The continuity alone is going to take me months to sort out. Thankfully, I'll have help with that. ), I might jump into the process again just for the framework to write more short fiction.