Finish line in sight

Yesterday I hit 98,000 words on the current novel. Which is about 13,000 words farther than I thought it would go, and I still have a handful of plot points that have to be included before we can hit the diminuendo and the "Good Night, Gracie!" And while it's easy to open it up and keep on going, I'm really wishing that it were finished already, because it's so easy to just open it up and keep on going.

I hate beginning, and I hate beginnings, and I hate wasting ink on the twenty thousand or so words of drain circling that it takes me to find the voice I'm looking for. And when I'm back at the beginning again, it's hard to remember that the beginning will ever be anything but shit. Which is why having something that's been almost done for a few months now is really dangerous: it's just easier to keep going with the really familiar, comfortable plot and characters than to do the research or write the opening of any of the things I'm actually supposed to be writing. Like the PhD novel that Henry thinks I'm already well into. Or the novel for Crime Fiction that Henry thinks I'm already well into. Or really, anything that can be slid in under the heading "things that my supervisor thinks that I'm working on."

The fact that it's 98,000 words without being done, by the way, is Exhibit A in the ongoing discussion of why I don't do NaNoWriMo. It's a discussion because everyone I know does it, and everyone I know that does it turns into a proselytizer when I say that I never have and probably won't. And the numbers are the 'why.'

On a day that I get absolutely nothing done, including putting on clothes, I draft 1,500 words. When I have something to avoid doing, can't sleep, or get really into it, it's more, but on the worst day it will be a solid 1,500; math it out, that's at least 45,000 a month. The goal of NaNoWriMo is a 50,000 word novel in 30 days; even when I was writing them out in Marble composition books, I haven't written a novel that ended in 50,000 words. I could double it up and maybe get out a complete novel in the alloted time, but I'd be pretty well cooked for the next few months, and nothing else would get done. Or I could call it finished at 50k and never mind that the story is only half done. But a novel is a novel and the goal of the exercise is to write a novel in a month while creating the habit of writing every day. It's a great idea and a fun exercise and brings people together into a support network, but it isn't really something I need right now. It's not that I can't find the time, just that I've found something that works better for me.

Now if only this bastard would complete so I could move onto something with an actual deadline...