Just Push the Button, Already

So...it's after three in the morning, and I'm sitting up watching the replay of the Clippers/Rockets game like I don't have to work both jobs today, starting in less than four hours. I should have been asleep hours ago, especially knowing that I overslept last week more days than I didn't.

But I'm keyed up and wired right now. Why, you ask? Because I just sent my final draft of my sixth book, Take One For the Team, off to the publisher. I've been working on the final edits this past week (maybe at least part of the reason for all the oversleeping) and I took my time to make sure it's just how I want it. And even though I've had this book written, with the chosen ending in place, for a while now, I agonized over it tonight. I kept going back and forth about if I wanted to end it this way or that way, or delete the entire last chapter altogether. I re-read the same paragraphs over and over, just knowing I was missing something. I was actually biting my nails, which I never do. Before I hit that SEND button, I wanted to be sure it was my idea of perfect.

I get like this whenever I send a book off, but for some reason I was amplified tonight. I don't even know why. But I was actually nervous and was taking deep breath after deep breath, wondering if I should leave it as it was or tweak it one final time. Indecisiveness has always been one of my flaws, and it certainly reared it's ugly head tonight. My son, who had woken up as I worked due to a bad dream, encouraged me after I had calmed him down from that...he suggested I flip a coin, told me how he thought I should end it, then finally just said, "Just make a decision, Mom."

Just push the button, already.

So I did. I trusted my gut that the ending should be left as it was and hit that darn SEND button, actually squealing as I did so. No turning back now (at least, not without a lot of hassle). You'll get to see what I decided on for the ending in a couple of months, hopefully. My son commended me, saying I handled that "like a boss." :)

Now I'm anxious to get going on the sequel. When I wrote the book (the first draft of which was completed in 2012), this was just going to be a standalone story, but the more I read it, the more I realized there was plenty more story left to tell, especially with the way I ended it. And after the way I left my readers hanging in Not By a Long Shot, I listened to the feedback (and the fussing lol) and wrote the sequel to that, Decisions and Consequences. And I've actually already begun the outline for a sequel to Take One For the Team anyway, but now I'm even more eager to write it. I'm excited and I love it.

I should go on to bed. I can work on the sequel later but there's nothing like the feeling of plowing ahead and burying yourself in a project, despite the fact that you're depriving yourself of sleep you need and nourishment you don't want to stop and get. I'm already looking forward to when I can hit that SEND button on another one; there's not many feelings like it.

Golden Girls is on...I'll just take a peek at my sequel notes and then lay down. Maybe.