Demons and Angels

I've been wandering again. There's something about being so close to the end, and yet not so close to the end that makes my focus falter. If it ever was that great to begin with. I've been scraping along in my not-writing life, just barely paying the bills--or not paying them, trying to deal with family, trying to make people buy my sewing... It's endless distractions. And I've heard three different people in the last week say that it's easy to avoid writing, because there are so many other things they'd rather be doing. Three. There's something fairytale-ish about that, isn't there? Like a warning. Like all I'd have to do to finish the book is bake three loaves a bread (one with a stone, one with seven kernels of corn, one with mouse fur, but that's another story). Or maybe I should go away for the weekend to a cottage on chicken legs, or....

It's so easy not to write. Because, as Natalie Goldberg says in The Thunder and the Lightning, writing is hard. Sewing is easy, it's finishable. Dishes are easy, they're finishable. Writing is... It's never ending. One story bleeds over into another, and they're all connected in the brain, right? In my brain, Ziggy lives in the same world as Mica and Frank, and the same world where my werewolf pack runs the North End of Flint.

Writing is hard. There's other stuff to do. Each time I hear that, I think, "That's not me." I would rather write than anything else. Anything else. So, why not this? Why write about writing the end, instead of actually doing it? I don't know. I'm stuck at the gates of Heaven. Not metaphorically, either. I'm right there. I didn't expect to be there, and I don't know what's going to happen if we go in....

If we do, will I be done? There's only one way to find out, I suppose.