wow, that is honestly all I want to say right now.

For a long time I never thought I would see this day, I mean - I did the most newbie and over excited author thing in the world - on the 28th of June 2015 I dove into this work with absolutely no outline or idea what on Earth was going to become of Winnie or her life. Yet here we are and after 1,542 days or 4 years, 2 months and 20 days I have finished the final chapter of Witch.

TIME FOR MY FAVOURITE PART OF FINISHING A BOOK;
~*~*~ FUN FACT TIME ~*~*~*

• WITCH started life out as "Undetermined" and Winnie was 100% not a Witch.

• SO this is my third (!?!?!) version of this book.

My first draft goes up to the hanging, I decided half way through that I wanted Winnie to be a witch. I got stuck on the hanging scene then decided to rewrite the beginning to be a little more witchy.

My second draft was basically a complete rewrite. I got up to the part Winnie returns to camp but had placed it before the war with the grounders. Yet again I got stuck.

My third (& final?!?!) is not a draft, it's the final work. I basically reworked what I had already done. Making longer chapters and not lots of small ones, adding more description/ dialogue, cutting out bits that weren't good etc etc etc. And I finally reached the end !!

• WINNIE as a name came from a story book my mum used to read to me called (you guessed it) Winnie The Witch. (I couldn't make this up even if I tried, except I excluded the cat )

• BASICALLY she's a witch because I read Macbeth at school and was like "that's really cool, I want Winnie to be a witch", then CAPTAIN OBVIOUS i thought the book should do what it says on the tin and I change the name.

• BACKSTORY; came about in the second draft. I also decided it would be cool if it was like a live memory and John Murphy was like a spirit observing it?!?!? Idk I watched The Last Witch Hunter and got an idea. Also in this Winnie actually purposefully suffocated her bro and that was a dark time for me writing and y'all Winnie would never do that.

•BELLAMY only became her bro the third time around. also I am unashamedly doing the sibling cliché + am proud.
•ALSO WHEN i decided her father should play a bigger role and cast the glorious Tom Ellis as Samuel Scarfone to do it. No regrets here either.

•WHEN I started writing this many moons ago there was about 50+ Bellamy Blake fanfics, and about (no joke) 5 Murphy ones. (this was literally as season 2 was coming out). It fills my heart that now there is so much more love for Murphy on here 💞💞💞

•MORAL OF THIS STORY; have at least a vague outline before you start writing. Please and thank you.

•80,000+ WORDS. Y'all you just read - and I just wrote - a fanfic the length of a good sized actual novel. I'm still shook.

I want to share some gems from my first draft that I found with you;

A | DONT YOU KNOW THIS IS A SECRET MURPHAMY BOOK?!?

Murphy leaned downs and whispered into Winnie's ear, "Looks like I made a new friend." He nodded to Bellamy and Winnie took her arm off him.

"Please, you think he likes you? He l-o-v-e-s you, it's in his eyes, he just better know he has competition." Winnie kidded and ruffled his hair.

let's just talk about the fact I used the word "kidded" and then followed with "ruffled" .

B  | THIS COULD HAVE BEEN HOW YOU MET LOVELY GENTLE WITCH WINNIE

Winnie could sense things, the hairs on the back of her neck were up and so was she, her lean figure by the side of the door. A man entered, his energy caused Winnie to internally cringe, she hated all of the Arke's Guards.

1 give them time to asses the situation, Winnie let both of them come in.
2 see the look of confusion, they turned to each other
3 hit em hard, she kicked them in the neck

my girl a human pretzel if she can kick a grown ass man in the neck. And y'all if this like ain't a straight scene from any generic spy movie. Jeez 15 year old me needs to find more inspiration.

C | WINNIE DID NOT KNOW THE FIRST THING ABOUT ROMANCE WHEN SHE FINALLY SPOKE TO MURPHY FACE TO FACE

"I didn't have to run a mile." Winnie joked, her voice cracking between her blowing more air out of her nose. A broken smile formed on her face as she had finally found her John Murphy.

TURNED INTO

"John Murphy." She stated, half of her hoping the smile suited her because she rarely wore one.

"Depends." He replied as they were left there, the shouts of joy and laughter were strange when they were used to silence. It didn't seem right.

"On what?" Winnie knew it was him. This conversation had 'John' written all over it.

"Whether you're middle name really is Fuck Off. I mean you got my hopes up Win."

ICONIC moment right there guys, just in case you forget it because I sure as hell did.
ngl I struggle to remember a lot of what I wrote in this book ahahahah😅

Now you may be asking;
"but sophie, you cant shy away from the obvious fact," you take a pause and compose yourself, "YOU LEFT THE BOOK ON THE BIGGEST CLIFFHANGER! HOW DARE YOU."

yes. you are completely right.
I did. For good reason. Winnie is no longer the witch anymore, the ground is going to start a new chapter in her life. sadly this has to be without Murphy for a little bit.

Will they meet again? you bet.
will it be the same? it could never be the same.

So I have an idea. A little time jump to the end of Season 3 / 4 (dun dun DUN) and well get to see exactly why Winnie or is it now Noa (?!?!) was taken in by Azgeda and what Viena's plan for her was in the first place was.

I would like to write it. Not right now, but sometime, and i might never do it. But I think this story stands as it is. The story of the Witch and her John Murphy. It may not have been beautiful but what first love is? It was wild and dangerous and heart pounding for both of them. And you can believe it that Winnie will never forget it. NEVER.

so, without further ado it's the most IMPORTANT part of me finishing a book.
it's saying thank YOU

And I do mean YOU. Because you I cannot even comprehend that you have stuck by me and Winnie for over thirty chapters.
I reply a lot to comments saying "I'm so glad / happy you like it!!!! ❤️❤️❤️" because HONESTLY that's what I feel, I cannot believe you're here.

I believing first and foremost writing has to be for yourself, the minute you begin to find yourself writing for other people (except if your paid to do it) you need to evaluate your choices.

There are times when writing this story (especially during my second attempt) was purely because I thought I had to finish and I really hated it.
So I took a step away from Winnie and when I came back I was ready to finish this book for real and for myself.

I couldn't be prouder of myself if I'm being honest. BUT I COULDN'T HAVE DONE IT ALONE.
Every single vote, comment or add to a reading list spurred me on to complete this story, to have my own little bit in the 100 fandom that I had been working on for FOUR YEARS. (Still wild). And now it's here. I can finally mark this book as "completed".

I may not be the most popular account, I may never reach 1K followers or have a series of fanfics or a status book that has more comments then most of my other fanfics. But I have you and Winnie. And that's good enough for me.

positive vibes,
sophs
aka
freehawks
17th of September 2019 and posted on 6th of October 2019.