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This happened about six days ago. It was something I started about this time last year, but the idea had been there in previous attempts (and failures) at novels for about seven or eight years.

Essentially I wanted to write about the more interesting dreams I had had and the characters in them. The idea was simple, but by last year the story and its characters had changed significantly. It revolves around lucid dreaming, the main character being stuck in a dream and questioning reality - the things one would expect.

Then the movie Inception came out. I am yet to see it, though I'm not too discouraged. Movies such as Waking Life already existed before this minor dilemma.

Anyway... it feels good to finally write the words "the end" on the last page of anything that has taken this long to finish. I spent the rest of Thursday night wandering around the house restlessly, thinking "what now?" I didn't want to start on the second draft in the same night, but I didn't want to do anything else either. It's a strange feeling. Does anyone else get this?

A friend of mine suggested leaving the first draft for a few weeks before beginning on the second, however I feel determined to finish the second draft as soon as possible. A main reason for this is because all of my first drafts are hand-written in five exercise books... I'm not even joking when I say that I'm frequently afraid that the house or something is going to catch fire and I'll lose them.

I can't think of what else to say.