I’ve just finished inputting the final corrections into my first novel, A Shore Too Far, and I was struck by two simultaneous emotions: a heightened sense of excitement about the novel’s release and a slight sadness at being done with the project. The first I was prepared for but not for its intensity; the second surprised me that I had it all.

Obviously, I’ve known, at least intellectually, that my novel will ultimately be released, but one never knows what that certainty feels like until one is actually certain. There’s an epistemological boundary that humans can’t overcome when it comes to experiences that we’ve never had. What does it feel like to get married? Ride a horse? You can find descriptions, stories, comparisons, but each experience is unique—and uniquely informing.

I’ve written before. I’ve even been published before, but this experience is its own and not something else, even if it is like something else. Nonetheless, there’s a touch of child-like foolishness I feel over each new intensification in my excitement.

The sadness, however, is more subtle and unexpected. I’m done. It’s through. And while there’s a thousand things yet to do for the novel’s release (including this and future blogs), the final aspects of writing the novel is finished. I will write other novels, other projects, but never again this project.

So, like a shipwright watching his ship slip from drydock into the waiting waters, I’ve launched my creation, moved it into the next stage of its existence. No more tightening the seals, no more adjusting its buoyancy. It’s adrift and belongs to the world.