You’ve been working on a book for a year, perhaps more, and you are finally approaching the end of some significant milestone (first draft, first revision, or possibly even publishing), what do you do to celebrate?
My first draft of my first novel ever written took four years. I finished my senior year of high-school and my reward was a bottle of sparkling grape juice (closest thing to champagne for an 18 year old) and the realization I had 193,000 words to edit. (BTW, the book in question is titled Atlantia and I redrafted the first 50,000 words of it a few years ago for NaNoWriMo. It’ll come out one of these days).
Since then I’ve often used champagne as my little reward for a job well done, which is funny since the little red haired girl has to open the bottle. Never have gotten the hang of how those corks pop. (Some psychologist might say it goes back to a childhood game that involved sitting on balloons to pop them which also explains my distaste for the sound of a popped balloon).
For the Fractal Book I’ve selected a game (and the accompanying time to play it) as reward, since it’ll be the first to be widely shared with the world. True to form the game is a sci-fi RPG from 1999 which features songs from David Bowie and apparently an in-game concert appearance by a character modeled after him, Omikron: The Nomad Soul. (Never been a giant fan of Bowie (I didn’t grow up liking the Labyrinth) but the game sounds cool). I’m holding off on buying it til I’m finished to avoid the temptation to play it and put off the book.
I’ve bought plenty of games (and the occasional bottle of champagne) prior to the completion of the book, but it’s kind of fun to have a specific reward in mind, something I’m denying myself until I’m done. Just a way to sweeten what’s already gonna be a pretty great moment (finishing the book).
Got any big plans for your next big novel milestone?
[BTW] : Ben Trube, Writer 
Congrats Ben. 😀
Thank you Brian! And thank you for your help thus far.
Congrats! And personally, I would like to write a novel that 50 years from now people will still be calling it “the most controversial book ever written”. I think that’s a good goal to work towards.
Controversial in what way (out of curiosity)? I don’t tend to think of my writing in those terms (or those of the “great American novel”) but I do hope that my stories are something people will want to read for more then a few days after I write them. Good luck Loren!
Controversial like… there’s no right answer, and after reading it the reader just feels like they have no idea which way is up or down anymore. Kind of like Lolita, where you sympathize with the bad guy pretty much the whole way through. I want to write something like that. Something that basically puts something terrible in the context of making it look good. I don’t really know.
I could never write the ‘Great American Novel’ either. I’ve only read a few American novels, and frankly, I’ll stick to Russian lit. I’m sure your writing will not expire after a few days. 🙂
So far it seems legit to me. I really enjoyed Denied the Stars.
I finished a recent draft, and couldn’t come up with a good reward for myself – I’m still excited. I did pour myself a nice, cool glass of chocolate milk (I don’t drink alcohol.)
Nothing wrong with chocolate milk. I’m a nut who prefers it to regular milk on cereal (yes I’m a 28 year old kid at heart).
Just finished my first draft and first revision super excited.
Congrats! That’s awesome. How did you celebrate?