First, the bad news: I failed the One Month Challenge. Miserably. About a week ago, a doubt set in that I couldn’t shake, and it just spiraled out completely. So, for that, I really suck.

BUT in a twist I never saw coming…

The good news: I FINISHED A DRAFT!!!!!

Okay, caveat—it’s short (a ‘pilot’ episode, 57 pages, about 17,500 words) so it’s not exactly War and Peace—but it’s FINISHED. Complete. It can stand alone as a testament to the fact that it is written and is a thing that exists. Hurrah.

Even though I failed the One-Month Challenge (the finished story is from a completely different project, that I’ve actually been working on now and again since high school but never got even this far), I’m still taking a HUGE victory lap on this one.

It has been FIVE. FUCKING. YEARS since I finished anything. I mean, I’ve written in that time, even longer pieces than what I finished yesterday—but they weren’t complete by themselves; they were always abandoned along the way. I’ve even tried writing episodic stories since then, and nothing. In fact, the last thing I finished was an episodic story—over five years ago.

And these were not five years ‘away’ from writing. These were five years of trying, every minute of every day, with everything I have to write and finish anything. And failing again, and again, and again, and… you get the idea. If you’ve read any of this blog, then you know I do nothing but whine about this fact.

But NOT ANYMORE… for the next five seconds, at least.

Because the fact is that the draft is… not good. And while I’m okay with that, and know it’s perfectly fine for a first draft to be complete crap, there’s a part of me that wants to throw it into the darkest corner of my hard drive and never look at it again. Let alone write the next episode, and the next, and however many are required to finish the book.

However, even if (and I’m not saying I will) I abandon this story completely and never revise it, never follow up with it, never share it with anyone—I am still going to celebrate this (for me) not-small-at-all VICTORY! I started something, I wrote it, and I finished it.

So this has been a really strange month. From the ashes of complete (and embarrassing) failure, rises a phoenix not seen in these parts for over five years. Will it flash its fires of passion for this brief moment and fly on for another five years? Or has it come to roost in my den of welcoming creativity? Or some other tortured metaphor?

For now, I celebrate the small victories… and hope there’s more where that came from. 🙂