That finished-a-draft feeling
Ahh, that feels good. It’s only a short story, one I’ll likely trim even further, but man does it feel good to type “the end”. Or rather [end] as I tend to prefer. I suspect this story needs more post-production help than any I’ve written in a long time, but at least it exists in completion.
I’d love to go on about this, but I’m in a pop-up camper with a sleeping wife and daughter and poking this all into a smartphone keypad, so I’ll digress. I intend to spend the next couple days pursuing a crazy idea some friends and I have been kicking around, then to edit this story and get it ready for an editor who explicitly told me not to work on it yet. (I don’t always listen so good.) Id like to have this one ready by the time I get back home. Right now I’m just happy this cold and rainy camping day turned out to at least be a productive one.
Scott W. Baker: Chaos out of Chaos 
Nice. I imagine that finishing a draft on a cold, rainy camp site is an even greater feeling than the usual sense of completion.
Congrats, my friend! Haha, I just finished posting a blog about finishing first drafts too. But I agree with Ben — cold, rainy days are awesome. And to finish a story on top of that? Priceless.
Congrats! Just finished the first draft of my latest short story yesterday, so I know exactly how you feel right now. I’m actually dying to give it a couple passes of polish, although dreading working out some of the minor details about space travel time that aren’t really relevant to the main plot. I went for a post-cyberpunk space western, this time. As scientifically sound as I can make it, but with a playful level of pulpish fun, too.
Keep at it! New words are the best kind. 🙂