Done done done

I finally finished work on the big book. I've spent almost every evening for the last three weeks indexing it, which involved going through 400 pages of proof with a highlighter at what felt like an agonisingly slow rate. It's a good job nobody told me beforehand how mind-numbingly tedious indexing a book is.

But it's done! After six years of research and revision, all the final typos and errors have been teased out, copyright permission obtained ($230 for the privilege of quoting a single Wallace Stevens poem on the first page!!) and index finished, and the whole thing passed on to my editor.

As I was finishing it this evening I cut my thumb opening a bottle of milk. I didn't have any plasters so I just waited for Mother Nature to do her congealing thing, but then instead I grabbed my indexing proof and scrawled

IT IS DONE

on the front page in my own blood. It seemed fitting. Outside I hear fireworks going off. They may be for Guy Fawkes Night, but I'm going to pretend they're for me instead.