Rituals of Done

It took me years to quit smoking. Once, I quit for 13 months, then started back up again. Then I quit for 18 months ... only to start back up again. And finally, about seven or eight years ago now, I quit for good. But even then, secretly, I cut a deal with myself: "Jon," I said, "you can have ONE cigarette whenever you finish a novel."

Obviously, that was before I realized that I would never actually finish a novel, that I would spend the next five years drafting and redrafting and redrafting and drafting, until every novel I've written since has been "finished" at least ten times. If I smoked a cigarette every time I finished a novel, I'd be a pack-a-day smoker again.

So I guess my point is that I "finished" another novel yesterday--meaning at least I finished another draft of a previously finished novel and sent it forward to someone who no doubt will tell me it's not quite finished yet and would I mind a few changes to make it truly finished ...

I didn't smoke a cigarette. I didn't really do anything. I guess I made spaghetti and drank an Anchor Steam, which isn't so different from my normal evening. Nowadays, "finishing" another novel is worth about 30 minutes of relief that I no longer have to forward "write book, you fool!" on my calendar every day, plus a few emails to my crit group to announce that I'm done and they probably won't see that book again ... until I have to finish it the next time.

But I do kind of miss the ritual and celebration of the old days, when writing "THE END" felt like I'd turned a corner. So you know what would make me feel better? If someone told me their "ritual of done" and it was a doozy ...