This has been an interesting experiment. I’ve posted poems and short fiction and “formal” essays before on my blog, but never a whole novel. Well, I still haven’t done that.

You see, my plan originally was to just post a couple of the early chapters and then throw myself into NaNoWriMo. Then I got the feeling that it wouldn’t go over well with some readers if I stopped at Chapter 3. So I challenged myself to keep posting. But I didn’t want it to go on for months. NaNoWriMo officially ended on November 30, and I wanted Clemency to finish up about the same time.

So I went ahead and posted every day, but not everything. I’ve left a lot of stuff out. So, no surprise if the pace is erratic, the character development inconsistent, the ending lame.

(Really? “Sara smiled” is how I end this novel? Cue Hall & Oates.)

As a reader, I’d be wondering why Misty didn’t get more attention, why not more of Melody who was pivotal to Misty’s case? But they do, Dear Reader, just not in the parts I decided to post. I had to leave things out in order to keep to a schedule and to not overwhelm you all with tortuously long posts. As it was, some of those posts did get kind of long. But I also got desperate. I didn’t want this to fall over into December, at least not by much.

So. I think I managed to pull this off without too much angst from my dear readers. And how dear you are. A few of you left comments now and then that were like mini-pep talks for me. They did help keep me going.

Others of you let me know you were reading but not commenting, and I appreciated that too. Some days the best I could muster was to “Like” someone’s comment and just move on. I could tell from my stats whether Clemency was being read, and I know some of you read a few posts at a time.

And others let me know you couldn’t keep up with daily posts.  And that was fine, too.  This wasn’t a test of reader loyalty.  This was a test of my own conviction.

You see, in the past, whenever I got any encouragement, I’d run the other way. Other people (i.e., normal people) embrace encouragement, grab it and hold it up as proof that they should continue writing because So-and-So said they should. I don’t know why I would run the other way. But, now at 57, I wonder if I knew I really wasn’t ready, at least not back then.

So now I’m feeling that I’m ready BUT I won’t be in a hurry. I can’t get back the last 20-30 years of self-doubt and plodding along, but that’s no reason to rush into something and make an ass of myself.

First, I’m giving myself a month off.  Clemency will stay up for December, and then all those posts will come down.

I’m not giving up my day job or yoga or watching TV with my husband and the cats after dinner.  Revising and editing will be, as they say in these parts, as slow as molasses in January …

Unless you live in Boston.

Many thanks to all of you who have hung in there with me, whether you were reading or not.

And tomorrow I will return to my regular irregular schedule …

Cheers!