First draft down and 2011 so far isn't better than 2010

Well, I finished the first draft of my novel. Now I feel like there is this massive gap in my life. Like the characters have all just run away from me, as if they are no longer mine and are just itching to get out into the real world.

I've been slaving over this story for about a year. I've developed as a writer, I've met other writers and I've accomplished so much.

Of course, now I have 90,000 words to edit. Grammar to tidy up, continuity to fix, minor characters to develop. So much work still needs to be done on it and yet I feel a little bit scared and a lot weird.

I wanted to celebrate last night, I thought that Mr. Wilde and I could have a few drinks and just do a bit of celebrating but I get home and he tells me that his grandad has only a week or so left. There's my full scale descent into misery.

Between us we lost three grandparents last year, two of Mr. Wilde's and one of mine. I must've been delusional to think that his grandad would hold on through this year but I thought we might get a little time before he died.

I hate being a fucking grown up. I wish all my grandparents were alive, I wish I could write a story, a few people would read it and that be that. But no, life's not allowed to be that easy.

Lamely, all this was exacerbated by the fact that my printer decided to run out of ink while printing the last ten pages of the manuscript, which, with the way I was printing, means pages 7-17 are pretty much unreadable. I edited the first six pages then got no further. I drank whiskey and felt angry.

Shit year is going to be shit.