Champagne and chocolate

Yes, I'm feeling celebratory today. In fact, it's a double whammy, so I'm feeling particularly self-indulgent.

First, it's Theatre Notes third birthday. In June 2004, I idly mused that a theatre review blog might be a good idea, although I didn't know whether anyone would read it. (See how dangerous thinking is - if you're not careful, it turns into an idea, and before long an idea becomes an obsession, and then you're up to your neck in it.)

It's succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. The readership has grown steadily year by year, to make TN one of the best read theatre blogs in the world. Over the past month, TN has been attracting around 6000 visitors every week. In fact, since June last year, TN has had 120,000 unique visitors, of whom 24,409 are return visits. I never thought I would say this, but check out my stats!

I don't know who all you lovely people are: in fact, part of me is quite mystified. But thank you, from the bottom of my heart. And thank you to all the companies who have been so supportive of this work, especially through the daffiness of the past few months as I've struggled to complete this monstrous novel. And thank you too to the many people who have commented on the blog and made it a lively and dynamic place to be, and to those who have emailed me or buttonholed me in foyers and said nice things, and to my fellow theatre bloggers for your support and stimulation. You have all made TN intensely rewarding in so many ways. I hope that TN and the bubbling theatrosphere (that seems to be the word du jour) will continue to grow as a space for discussion and dissension, a space where theatre can be taken seriously for the beautiful artform it is.

And if I sound a little delirious, well - the other part of the celebration is that I've finally got to the end of that novel. Yes, last night I typed THE END. (I always feel novels should have THE END at the end of them...) It doesn't mean that it's actually finished - there's a brief rewrite before I send it to my editor, and then there's the endless process of editing, copyediting and proofing three separate editions (at least when it comes out in German I won't have to worry about proofing that one). But the awful struggle to actually get it down on paper is over at last.

It's 461 pages long, 135,756 words in all. Those are beautiful stats indeed. But it's actually the end of a much larger project, a quartet of novels on which I've been working for the past seven years. I have completed a story that's about 2000 pages long. I can't quite believe that I've done it. But dammit, I have.