I’m playing around with the blog templates in Movable Type. I kinda like these pink hills. I also kinda like that almost no one reads this blog right now, so I can do whatever I want.  Someday soon I will have a real web designer who will make it look all spiffy… till then, I’m just goofing around.  (Facebook friends: in case you’re super-confused, this paragraph refers to the actual blog at www.minalhajratwala.com/blog/ which is where I import these notes from.)

Wow.  A full week after I shipped off the final-final-final manuscript, it has finally sunk in that the book is actually finished.  I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and was writing in my journal, as I sometimes do in the middle of the night, and the words that came were, “We did it!”

By “we” I meant, of course, all the parts of myself — the journalist and the poet, the little artist child, the grownup disciplinarian, the critic, the productivity monster, the logistical brain, the nap-taker, the intuitive emotional self, the wise old crone… — selves who were often at war with one another, but eventually somehow all pulled together in the end.

And of course, “we” also includes my fabulous team of people who loved and supported me through the whole insane writing process.

Someday maybe I’ll write more about what it was like to write this book. I had no idea when I started that it occupy seven years of my life, and change me so profoundly.

But for now, I am doing as a friend suggested and trying to just stay with this feeling — to bask in the sensation of completion.  BASK — what a great verb. Makes me think of sunny beaches, and palm trees, and margaritas.

Wow. We did it.