I wrote 15,200 words today. The first draft of the Bridge novel (AKA The Light of a Better World) is finished. Heather just wrote "The End" on the last page of the manuscript.

This is the single best writing day I've ever had. In 1996, I did 15,000 words in one day, and this time, I did almost a whole page more than that! This isn't a stunt I'll be repeating anytime soon. But once the end of the book was in sight, I didn't want to stop.

It's my day off, and I started writing around 9:30 this morning, and took a break at 11:30 to go out for some lunch, do a little shopping, etc. Got back and started working again at 1:30, and pretty much plowed straight through until nearly 5:15. I got done about ten minutes before I had to leave to pick up Heather.

Now, I'm not done done. I still have a few thousand handwritten words to type in, and I want to do a read-through this weekend to look for really egregious errors, though I won't have time to do anything more than a patch-and-spackle job on anything I find. There are a couple of short backfill scenes I'll need to write, too, in order to set up for things that happen later. But it feels like I'm done. I crossed off all the scenes on my outline. A great psychological weight has been lifted. I should be able to upload something remotely readable for the other members of the writing workshop I'm doing in May.

Wow, it feels good. I think I'll spend the rest of the night on the couch watching Project Runway and DVDs of The L Word. Y'all have a nice evening.