Golden prose

Writing a book is hard. Ending it is harder. Everything I write, and mind you I'm in the last 2000 words, seems hackneyed and lame.

And I know, I know, I can fix it in rewrite, but it feels a little like I'm killing my book by not doing the end justice. I'm so ready to be done with this part, to be able to set it aside for a week or two and then see what I have.

I'm so ready to be done with getting up early to do this stuff and thinking about it all day and then working on it more at night, and feeling like I'm missing the gorilla in the room. Feeling like there's a whole other story floating on top of my characters' heads and I just can't see it. I hate that! I hate that feeling of blindness.

And as much as I love writing first drafts, because they're so freewheeling and fun and you can seed all kinds of stuff that you can pick up later, it also feels dangerous, like you're on a tightrope and if you look down you're screwed, and I feel like that's all I've done lately, is look down.

Whine whine whine. And I may not set it aside for a couple weeks; I may just dive in this weekend and start working out what scenes I need to include. There are whole sections of arc that are shown - at the end, no less - rather than told, and I need to work on those.

I also started off thinking Pere and Hade were in love, then changed it midway through to them being openly antagonistic toward one another, but secretly carrying a torch - so I don't know. I don't know which rings more true, or which lends itself to the story.

There's a reason reading books is so much easier than writing them.