This ain't THE END

I'm getting a nervous feeling in my stomach now whenever I edit my book.  I looked up and saw page 500, which is actually irrelevant.  As I understand it the epublishing format doesn't require pages.  I've taken chunks out the book this time so it isn't page 500 anyway. 

OMG.  OMG.  OMG.  I'm almost finished!  Anything I do after I have read and edited the last chapter (which P.S. is not really the last chapter, the last chapter has not been written - it's my whipped cream AND my cherry when I've done everything else) will have to do with grammatical corrections.  Other than that, FINI.   Why get nervous?  I don't know why.  I get giddy too after I've read a chapter that I really like, whether in this book or in one of my others, where I'll have a literally visceral reaction, like when my kids would bring home a particularly good report card.  It's not like I accomplished anything.  I can't believe I've had anything to do with stuff like that, neither good writing or the fact that my kids got good report cards. You know that new stuff they've discovered in space?  Dark Matter?  Well. it's like Dark Ego.  I'm not proud that I've (insert the accomplishment here), but more like astounded that I'm capable.  So, in relation to that, I kind of don't want this process to stop, even though I have another book I am editing for publication sort of at the same time. (*I read in jakonrath.blogspot.com or maybe it was Be the Monkey - Ebooks and Self-Publishing: A Dialog Between Authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath, it's a really good idea to load a few things in a relatively close time frame so that should readers become interested in your work that they'll be able to find more work by you quickly.)  That other novel, "Magician" is being edited from its first draft which I wrote about fifteen years ago.  I'm having a lot fun with that story because in the beginning of the book my protagonist, Jeremy Dunnett, is a very precocious child living in South Carolina, so I get to play with accents, humidity and lush landscapes. 

Oh, my goodness I took off on a tangent.  The bottom line is that I am Terrified of finishing.  Why is that?  Maybe...DOH!!

Maybe because it's one of the very, very, very few things that I have control over.  Once it's gone, I will no longer be able to manipulate it.  But I have other planets, don't I?  Yeah, but I don't know them quite as well.  The only other book I new like this one - all the cracks in the sidewalks, all the streams, the fossils, everything down to the quarks - was my first, The Hunt.

Oh whatever.  I love writing.  I love everything about it.  I love the craziness it makes me feel.  I love the schizophrenia.  Even when I can't write a single word without throwing a mental hissy fit, I know, in that same visceral, alligator-in-my-belly way, that it will find a way to manifest.  And when I'm done with one, the other one just takes it's place, sliding in, nice and comfy, because it's been there all along. So, stop the drama, Olga.

Finish it.