Feeling Meh (Excuse the sheer amount of commas)

Do you know that feeling when you're heading towards the end of something, something you've been working towards for a really long time, and it would mean a goal achieved, and it's all you want, yet the closer you get, the further away it squirms like a dirty fat slug?

Please say you know what I mean. 

GRRRRRRRR. It's the novel. It's almost done and I know what I want to say and I pretty much know how I want it to end, but every time I sit down to write it, I end up throwing in another chapter, pushing the ending further away, or getting drowned in - albeit clever -  banter like dialogue that isn't particularly necessary. But the damn ending is. 

I hate that sometimes beginning something and working your ass off at something can give you so much pleasure, and it can completely absorb you, but then comes the doubt and the negativity which draws away from your goal. What happens when I finish it? Years of edits? Reams of rejections? What if I just keep on writing it forever and never finish it? Then I'll never have to deal with the after crap. 

Of course this is ridiculous, because if I write a stupidly long novel like my first one, that was part and parcel of the reason that I needed the years of edits. But this novel is fairly concise and I'm happy with the length and the story and blah, blah, blah. So why can't I just finish off this bastard and squish the damn slug?

It's that pesky head of mine getting in the way again. I know what I want it to do, but it seems to have it's own agenda, and one that I'm not privy to. Sometimes I just wanna shake myself, physically shake all the crap, doubt, distractions and negativity out of me, but then I wonder if the ending would still be there. What if I shake that out too?

I don't think it helps that I now have a self imposed deadline of Thursday next week, as we go on holiday on Friday and I want it finished, so that it can all just rest and sit and stew, whilst I turn off my head - unlikely but I can try - and enjoy a break from this world. But of course that adds a level of pressure I never had with the rest of the book, and sometimes deadlines work for me, other times a deadline makes me procrastinate for Britain until the last possible moment, then I cram everything on the final night. 

I'm so ready to finish, but I'm not so sure I'm ready to let go of the feeling of writing a novel, which greatly surpasses the feeling of having to end a novel, to say goodbye to those characters you've been honing and developing and giving up all of your time to. They're like children that only exist in your head. Which is a weird thing to say, but as you can tell I'm in a weird mood today. I live and breathe every moment they do and sometimes that affects my moods and the way I think, because I become so wrapped up in their lives that it can sometimes overpower my own. 

Wow, I feel like I just spewed up words on the page. Not a lot of this probably makes sense, but bear with me. I'm hungry and irritable and meh and all out of sorts, and the big bad is coming for my characters and I can't even hurry up and end it for them. Some shit is going down in these last few chapters, and the anticipation could possibly kill a couple of them off. 

My word I'm hungry and this weather is borderline dystopian. That weird greyness hanging every morning, giving way to an almost nuclear sun in the afternoons, it's creeping me out big style. Something is just not sitting right at the moment. Something has shifted and feels wrong. But at least Scotland didn't kick us to the curb, because I was feeling pretty weird about that too. 

Now this was started about fifteen minutes ago and just goes to show how much you can hurl out when you need to. This wasn't so much a rant as a personal therapy session. I read something the other day about how people writing about their feelings or worries can actually help you to deal with them and put that thought or problem out of your head, onto something else or into something else. Well, this is pretty much what I do ninety percent of the time anyway, because that's how I work, but today I physically needed this. I needed my words to splurge out in a random torrent and my fingers to dare to keep up with them. I needed some of this just out of my body - to make room for all the monstrous amounts of pasta I'm now going to eat - and most of all I just needed to share it with someone. I may not be great at speaking the words, but the words are in me and they need to find a way out. This is it. 

Thanks for the free therapy. I needed it. 

Rants