New story complete!

 
I was able to do a bit of revision on my latest Buffyfic during the family reunion, over the weekend, and a bit more yesterday, and finished it today. Wound up expanding it by about 10%, adding one small segment and rewriting another, along with the standard revision that I do with every story. And now I’m done.

This is an unusual situation, and if it was the norm, I’d change my system to recognize the fact … but my standard rule is to pronounce a story to be finished when I complete the first draft, because I keep fine-tuning stories pretty much forever. (Less than two months ago I made an addition to “First Do No Harm”, which I finished and posted over four years ago, and I’ve gone farther back than that.) As a result, I can now say that I did, in fact, manage six stories — five of them Buffyfics — ‘during’ my latest deployment.

Feeling good, as is always the case when I know a story is complete, though that sensation usually comes with the completion of the draft; deferred this time because I went to bed the moment I was done with the draft, was on a plane the next day, and was in the middle of funeral and travel and official necessities and lots of other stuff for the next three weeks. I let sroni read the original draft, and her response (she liked it, but didn’t catch the significance of an important aspect) shaped the direction of the revision.

But it’s done, unequivocally now, and I’ll start posting the parts tomorrow.