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Dean Martin has finally paled on me. I switched to Tony Bennett, but it just wasn’t what I wanted. Right now, it’s the Barenaked Ladies holiday album playing behind me. I have a stack of holiday albums waiting beside the player. I think next in the stack is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The fact that I’m listening to one holiday album after another let’s you know just how slow the writing is going. Aaahhh! I just have to keep repeating to myself, we’re almost done, we’re almost done. Of course, that chant worked better two hundred pages ago, when I thought the book would end at six-hundred pages. Now, as we are almost eight hundred pages into the book (788) the matra of almost done just doesn’t have the ring of authenticity that it used to have. Damnit. We are so hitting eight hundred pages, and that leaves me with nine hundred looming on the horizon. I do not want this book to be nine hundred pages long. And longer might drive me mad. The deadline is looming, and I need this book done. Damnit. I’m starting to look around at ways to shorten the ending, and wrap things up faster, and that’s never a good frame of mind to write in. You get sloppy, and rush. Maybe I need to meditate, or take the dog for a walk around the block. Something to quiet that voice in my head that is screaming, just fucking finish it! Bad voice, bad anxiety. Usually that worried voice is an asset, and helps me write faster, but there comes a point where it’s a detriment, and this is it. Hell, I’ve done almost anything to avoid sitting at my desk today. I’ve even switched desks. It helped, for awhile. I think this is my second blog entry for the day, and I did two yesterday, as well. I’m portioning them out, but they’re just another way to avoid the book. I’ll write a few sentences then need to do something to calm down. Sometimes I do this, usually in the middle of a book, but sometimes at the end. I hate it at the end. It all works out, but it feels miserable until I find a way to deal with the anxiety. In the middle of a book, I just work through it, at the end of a book it doesn’t usually go away until the book is finished. That’s why I hate this mood more at the end of a book, because it usually lasts longer. I’m going back to work now.