It is hard to describe the amount of joy an author feels when finishing their first novel.

For me, it was a June morning – a Thursday – around 11 am. I was sitting on the couch in our living room where a cup of coffee was slowly transitioning from lukewarm to cold. I remember finishing one of the chapter’s near the end of the novel. I scrolled down my GoogleDoc to find the next chapter that needed my attention.

Then I scrolled up.

Then down again.

And then it dawned on me: I’m done. This book, which was previously only an idea in my brain, was now written in one long GoogleDoc.

I wrote a book. Hot damn!

I didn’t know how to react. I scrolled up and down the document again, searching for those brackets with the bolded words [MORE HERE] calling out to me. Surely there was a scene that had missing dialogue or a landscape that needed more description. Yet there was nothing.

A smile slowly stretched across my face. I ran downstairs to my wife, who was working from home because of COVID quarantine.

“I finished it,” I told her. I told her in the same monotonous tone one would use to announce that they had watered the plants, as if finishing a novel was a routine household chore. My voice had not caught up with the excitement bouncing around my brain.

Being the ever-supporting spouse she is, she jumped up and gave me a hug. Later that night, we had champagne.

I took the time to embrace the happiness that seemed to float through the air. I knew that a first draft is far from a finished product. I knew there would be edits and rewrites and reorganizations and all sorts of work.

But that day, I embraced the joy.

What have you accomplished that brought a similar amount of joy? Let me know in the comment section below.