How long have you been working on your book? Months? Years? How many revisions and rewrites have you gone through along the way? Probably dozens, if not hundreds.

Which is why there’s something bittersweet about typing “the end.”

Sure, typing those two words feels wonderful. You did it. You finished your book. You likely will want to get up to pour the drink of your choice—maybe a special latte if it’s morning, that single malt if it’s later in the day. “I finished!” you tell your partner, your kids, your parents, your friends. “I just finished a book!” you tell the UPS person, the supermarket checkout clerk, the driver with his window down in the car next to you at the red light. You should be proud. Finishing a book means you started with a picture in your head and translated that picture into words on the page. I’m proud of you!

And yet… The end. Finis. It’s over. Baby, bye-bye. Every day for the past XX months (or years), you’ve sat down at your desk and opened that file. You’ve lived with Dick and Jane and Spot and Tiger as if they were real people (and dogs and cats)—which, to you, they were. Now they’re gone, and you’re left with… you.

I’ve often said that I’m a very dull person. All I do is sit in a room all day, making things up. Stuff—both good and bad—happens to other people. My life, to cite my favorite author quote, from Gustave Flaubert, is “regular and orderly.”

Ah, but there’s the second half of that quote to consider: “Be regularly and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.” That’s why those who aren’t writers find us so fascinating: They sense that violent originality. They know we may present a quiet façade, but inside we’re teeming maelstroms of chaos.

Which is why, when we type “the end,” we feel so empty. This particular teeming maelstrom of chaos has been tamed. No more jumping the fence. No more chasing rabbits. For that one moment after we type “the end,” we’re merely regular and orderly.

But then we pick ourselves up again. I try to go out the day after I write a book to start catching up on all the errands I put off as I raced for the finish. Today is such a day, because I finished a novel yesterday, but it’s cold and windy and wet. This is Albuquerque, so tomorrow will be a better day, and I’ll venture out then. Today I’m catching up on postponed to-do’s: update website; update FB page; update Amazon page; update mailing list; write a new blog post…

Yes, I’m still left with that bittersweet feeling. I’ve sent the manuscript to my agent, so I really can offer a toast to its completion, but it’s all right to feel bereft, too. After all, I’ve just said goodbye to my best friend of the past year.

I’ll just have to make up a new one.