Handed in my final PhD work at 3 a.m. this morning. The send button clicked, the file vanished into the university\u2019s portal, and I sat there staring at the screen as though something enormous just ended, or maybe just begun. It reminded me of finishing a record: months, sometimes years of writing songs, rehearsing, arranging, revising, chasing down the right takes, then one day you hand it to the mastering engineer or the label. Suddenly, the music is no longer in your hands. It belongs to someone else, to a process you can\u2019t control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A novel feels the same. You\u2019ve lived inside its sentences so long that they\u2019ve started to echo in your thoughts when you\u2019re cooking dinner or walking across a parking lot. Then one day you hit \u201csubmit\u201d and the novel leaves you. It becomes a document in another person\u2019s inbox, a bundle of files awaiting judgment. The room feels too quiet afterwards, the way the studio does after the last track is mixed and you realize the band has packed up, the microphones are back in their cases, and the mess of creation is over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both moments are bewildering because you expect some kind of fanfare, some obvious sign that you\u2019ve crossed a finish line. Instead, it\u2019s just silence. No confetti. Only the hum of the refrigerator and the question rising: What happens next?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"