I thought typing The End would feel like finishing a book. Turns out, typing The End mostly means you’ve unlocked an entirely new list of things to do.

When I finished the first draft of The One Who Listened, I was proud. Incredibly proud, actually.

But it was also surreal.

I had spent so much time inside this story. I knew these characters, their personalities, their histories, the things they would say and the things they absolutely wouldn’t. They had existed inside my head for so long that seeing an actual ending on the page was emotional in a way I wasn’t quite prepared for.

I had done it.

I had written a book.

And almost immediately, my brain went:

Okay. What happens now?

Apparently, More Editing

You would think after writing an entire novel, I might have closed the document and enjoyed the accomplishment for a while.

Nope.

I started editing again.

Because apparently there is a very specific form of author insanity where you spend months trying to reach the end of a manuscript, finally get there, and then voluntarily return to Chapter One.

Suddenly, I was reading the story differently.

I wasn’t just asking whether I loved a scene anymore. I was asking whether it needed to be there. Whether the pacing worked. Whether a character’s reaction made sense. Whether something I understood perfectly because I created these people would make the same amount of sense to someone meeting them for the first time.

And eventually, I reached the part I was dreading even more than editing.

I had to let someone else read it.

Handing Over the Characters in My Head

This was, without question, one of the hardest parts.

Writing is strangely private.

Even when you’re writing something you fully intend to publish, for a long time the story still belongs only to you.

No one else knows what happens on the next page.

No one else has opinions about your characters.

No one can tell you they loved a scene you almost deleted—or point out something you somehow missed after reading the same chapter seventeen times.

Then you send the manuscript to beta readers.

And suddenly?

They’re not just yours anymore.

Other people are meeting Elias. Celeste. The boys. Raven Division.

They’re choosing favorites.

They’re reacting.

They’re making predictions.

They’re noticing things.

And I’m sitting on the other side of the screen trying very hard to act like a completely normal, well-adjusted author while someone else is wandering around inside a world that, until very recently, existed almost entirely inside my head.

It is exciting.

It is terrifying.

And honestly?

It’s a little weird.

“Finished” Has a Very Loose Definition

That’s probably the biggest thing I’ve learned from this stage of writing my first book.

There are apparently several different versions of finished.

There’s:

I finished writing the story.

Then:

I finished this round of edits.

Followed shortly by:

Wait. I need to fix something.

And somewhere beyond all of those is the mysterious final version that eventually becomes an actual book.

While beta readers are reading, there are still decisions to make. Feedback to consider. More edits waiting. Formatting. Final page counts. Cover sizing. The spine. The book description. Categories. Keywords. KDP.

Things I knew existed when I decided I wanted to publish a book, of course.

Knowing they exist and actually reaching the point where you have to make all of those decisions are two very different things.

Somewhere Between a Manuscript and a Book

That’s where The One Who Listened is right now.

The story has an ending.

The manuscript exists.

Other people are actually reading it—which is still slightly terrifying to type.

But it isn’t quite the book you’ll eventually hold in your hands.

Not yet.

Right now, it exists in this strange little space between the story I wrote and the finished book I’ll eventually release into the world.

And as overwhelming as this part can be, I think there’s something special about it, too.

Because someday, hopefully, I’ll look at a finished copy of The One Who Listened and remember when it was still just a document on my computer.

When Elias and Celeste were still mostly mine.

When beta-reader notifications made me nervous.

When I was researching KDP categories, thinking about spine measurements, making editing notes, and wondering how many more times I could possibly reread the same sentence.

When I had technically finished writing my first book…

…and was discovering just how much came after The End.

— Auren Rose