I think booking a professional massage is the perfect way to celebrate any achievement.

How do you celebrate when you achieve a writing goal/ finish a story?

This is the question that is pondered by the Insecure Writer's Support Group for the March 7th question, and it's a pretty good one. It made me think of a particular scene in the movie, Romancing the Stone:

For those of you that don't know this movie because you are too young to have seen it, the plot is pretty simple (and kinda great):

A single, lonely, romance writer finds herself caught in a wild adventure of her own when her sister calls for her help. She immediately heads to Columbia in search of her sister. Unbeknownst to her, she carries a map to the largest emerald in the world, and there are many people after it. She teams up with Jack, a guy who seems to to have stepped off the cover of one of her books, in hopes to reach Cartagena and her sister.

At the beginning of the movie (where the above gif is taken), she's finishing up a steamy romance and is putting the finishing touches on her story. In tears, she goes about her apartment looking for tissues, doesn't find any, and celebrates anyway by blowing on a note that was intended to remind her to buy more tissues and then some wine and a nice relaxing sit by the fire (if I remember correctly). The next day she drops off the finished manuscript off with her publisher or agent (I'm not sure who it is at this point). Anyway...it's a great representation of how to celebrate finishing a story even if I've never done it that way.

I honestly haven't finished that many stories, and for me, there really isn't a definitive finishing point usually because I need to do (or am compelled to do) rewrites and revisions. I wish it was a matter of "type type type" and "The End." But there is a kind of #selfcare that I do on a regular basis that seems kind of celebratory, and I usually do it whenever I feel particularly good about an accomplishment and that's to book a massage at a local spa. So yeah, I think going to a Japanese spa is what I do to celebrate anything, and that includes finishing a story (if I can even definitively call it that). It's usually a two hour one with side accouterments like a steam room and sauna and my latest favorite: the warm coconut milk drizzle. Yeah, it's as awesome as it sounds.  Seriously, if you guys out there aren't getting massages, it could really change your mood and put you in a zen state for at least a week (give or take life's stressful circumstances).

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