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I’ve had to step back from Merry for a few days. I’m lost. I just can’t seem to get perspective on the plot. Either we really are going to kill one of the main villains of the piece at the end of book seven, which will cut the total number of books by several, or I’m just tired. Not a physical tiredness, but this sensation that comes over you sometimes in a series. You know so much about what’s coming, and what’s happened, that sometimes it all gets tangled in your head. It’s like a knot in a chain. The more you pull at it, the tighter the knot gets. You have to pick at knots like that, gently easing them this way and that. All I’ve done for the last few days is pull tighter until the knot seems impossible. So, I’m stepping back. It breaks my rule of never stopping in the middle of a book. But I’m not in the middle. I’m at the end. I’m at most a hundred pages out, and I’m freaking stuck.
I don’t think I’ve ever been this stuck, this close to the end before. It is an odd and uncomfortable sensation. If it were earlier in the book, I’d say that I’ve taken a wrong turn and need to back track. But the end is in sight, and the book that has gone before is good. There’s nothing wrong, so why am I stuck?
I have written and rewritten the last fifty pages of this book, twice now. Each of those pages is different. I’ve thrown out and started over, and it still isn’t right. So, in desperation I’m backing off and letting the end cook in my imagination, rather than trying to throw it onto paper before it seems ready. But, there will come a point of diminishing return. If my muse and I don’t come up with something brilliant, or at least exciting, and true to the book, by next week, then all bets are off. The book has to be finished. A hundred pages is not a barrier I can stand to leave untouched for long.
You can have all your fine literary ideals, but I’m a working writer. I’ll quote Jack London, “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
I’ll wait a few days, then I’m getting a club.