I finished the novel I began in prison

Dear Delyara, I began writing a novel on prison-issued paper while serving an eight-year sentence. I wrote at night when the unit was quiet and kept pages inside legal envelopes so they would not be thrown away during searches. After release, work, housing appointments, parole conditions, and caring for my mother left little time. I nearly abandoned the manuscript because every chapter carried the voice of the person I had been inside. A community writing program provided a mentor, computer access, and a room where nobody asked me to turn my past into a lesson before treating the work seriously. Tonight, I typed the final sentence. The novel is 84,316 words. It may never be published. Finishing it matters before anyone decides whether it is marketable. For years, institutions wrote summaries of my life—charge sheets, risk assessments, parole reports. This book is the first long account in which I chose what happened on every page and nobody else had the authority to reduce me to the worst thing I had done.