So I finished my novel, what else is new?

I always remember what David Robertson of the Pennypack Trust told me when I asked him how he felt after he and his staff wrote the grant that would eventually get them the exquisitely beautiful meadow called Raytharn Farm. Frankly, my dear, he said, we were so exhausted and worn out from all the effort it was an anticlimax.

Same with me when I finished my book at 10:58 a.m. yesterday. I looked at the clock on the lower right of my putt-putt, as my former b/f Simon called the computer. Simon was the prototype for the main character, a lovable eccentric, who holds the fictional Sherman A. Scott Chair of Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania.

The characters did indeed come alive and like real children began doing things without my permission. They walked off the page. I never knew this happens until I wrote the damn thing. When I'd sit at the computer I'd enter the world of my characters and blank out real life.

And you wouldn't believe what I was going thru in real life! New Directions! My god, the crises I was involved in with our members. I was in touch with the Abington cops, Building 50 at MCES, Horsham Clinic.

Drama in real life. Drama on the page.

I love it!

All along I didn't know how the book would end. Certainly I was a bit worried. Jog jog jog - I tried to nudge my imagination but it wouldn't budge. Finally I came up with a plan. I visualized it carefully and thought it would work.

But typing away my fingers refused to cooperate. There we were, three characters in the blue office of the Professor's Bensalem house, when - aha! - it suddenly became clear what must happen.

It suddenly became clear.

Where did IT come from?

God only knows. I told Scott about the sudden turn of events and he loved the idea. Had he not, I still would've gone with it. I am solely responsible for the story, no one else.

It's now in the hands of A Reader who will advise me.