At a loose end

Here I am. Almost the end. 18 months later and 80,000 words in the bag. So close. I’m really just a paragraph away - and then it’s done. But I keep faffing about, don’t I? A quick change to some lemons in Chapter 2. Oh, and there’s something wrong with the strawberries in Chapter 6. Back to that last paragraph again. Is this right? Is this ending going to work? Is this what everyone’s been waiting for for the last seven chapters and hundreds of pages?

You know what? Maybe I’ll just set up a quick website or find a strikingly incisive epigraph. That’s a bright idea, isn’t it? Down the rabbit hole of photographs and fonts and digging out some old novels that had a few apt lines somewhere - where were they? There’s that afternoon gone. Back to the final paragraph. You can’t do anything until you’ve nailed the final paragraph. Who cares about an epigraph for an unfinished novel? Website? What flaming website? Unless it’s finished, it doesn’t exist.

That’s a very pretty picture of lemons and limes. What about this dripping tap? Or some gaffa tape? Or a gun? That’ll fit right into the story line. It’ll look nifty on the website. Bit of a laugh. But no one’s laughing until that final paragraph is done - and done right. That’s what happens when you don’t have a set deadline. You could go on forever. Only you can’t. There has to be an ending. And it can’t be flabby. It can’t be loose.