Endings can be hard. I couldn't finish Eyes in the Fire - everytime I sat down and tried to write the last eighty pages, my hands started shaking. I finally said screw it, grabbed my sister and went to Hawaii for a week, and just baked in the sun.

I don't think that actually helped the writing process, but the fact that I'd taken a holiday specifically to enable me to come back and finish it removed any excuse I had for not doing just that.

Hard. Hard hard hard. Not always - the current series have really easy endings to write, because there's a three-part scenario in each one: the exorcism, the wind-down, and then the one fact that the characters don't ever get to find out but the reader does - but sometimes.

Hard.

I think mysteries have a special obligation in that area, too, but maybe it's just I've never written anything so big before.

GO Erika, with getting close to the end! I used to tell my classes that they had to be willing to finish a shitty draft so they could then have something to make wonderful in rewrites. Actually finsihing, for the very reasons you mentioned, iis why many good writers quit, and it's so sad because once you finish one book (or play or whatever) and see how the rewriting process works, it gets easier both to do the work and to think of yourself as a writer

The great ones make it look so easy.

That's because they're not showing you their rough drafts. IJS.

This is true. I would like to see someone Very Important publish one, one time. Something famous...writers would feel so much better. It would be like a DVD commentary for books. "Rough Draft of Kavalier and Klay"

"Rough Draft of Kavalier and Klay"

I wonder if Michael would dish, for enough ginger cake...

Nah. Probably not. I might, but I doubt he would.

"Why did we just get a cake the size of my head? Somebody must want something."

Oh shiny! New thread! Aaaaand, this is probably my token post until the week after next.

Why did we just get a cake the size of my head? Somebody must want something."

"Give me your Pulitzer, Dishy Comics Boy, or I put sliced cucumbers in the ginger cake!"

"Oh, Ms. G, I think you're trying to seduce me."(Was gonna go with "Tell me what I want to know or Mr. Fett gets it, but Ben Braddock set my BJG button...it seemed appropriate. They're gonna cut open my brain and find nothing but stand-up, Motown, and The Graduate, I swear.)