The long, slow climb to the end ...

Blaaaaaarrgh!

Writing is like drawing blood from a stone this week - or, as I read in a blog post by Timothy Hallinan, "like giving birth to a broken window". The words are coming out, but they're coming out in tiny, painful pieces that make me wince. And I don't want to take a break from it. I feel I need to write through this rather than putting it to one side, because I'm nearly at the end and I don't want to lose any momentum.

This difficult writing period has also meant that I don't want to do anything. Nada. Rien. Don't want to see anyone, don't want to talk to anyone, don't want to go anywhere, don't want to put on makeup or get milk from the supermarket, just want to sit here glaring at the screen until I scare my book into submission. And chewing my nails. And drinking lots of coffee. I want to be a caffeine-addicted nail-less hermit.

Having said that, I'm about to take a deep breath and dive back into the story for a while. See if I can breathe some life into it and get something done.

At some point I've got to hit a downhill patch, right? I'm hoping that once I get over this hill I'll be skippety-hoppety-ing towards the end.