OOPS!…I Did It Again*

*Click here, but only if you wanna: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEsqGOHo0nI

Attribution: rubel58, Wikimedia Commons

What. A. Mess.

Let’s see, I wrote my last post on January what? Ahh, the eighteenth. And on that fateful day, I wrote (in a blog post aptly titled, ‘The End.’):

I have to consider CHERRY done right now.

That made sense, but just to get it into my thick head, I actually made a declaration, to wit:

My baby, I declare you done. Finished. FIN, baby. Spread your wings and fly, my little dove. In other words, GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE.

Before I change my mind.

Yeah, about that.

I may have jumped the gun just a wee little bit. See, for the last three days I’ve been doing to my last chapter what that there oversized, ant-smashing finger is doing to those oversized ants. It isn’t a pretty sight, and I am not at all proud of myself. At the very least, I’m a simpering wimp who can’t control her tweaking for five flipping minutes. At the very worst, I’m a liar. My sincerest apologies to any and all who stopped by the other day to congratulate me on finishing my revisions. I am unworthy.

Is anybody still there? If you are, kind readers, I want to thank you. I appreciate the hell out of you. And if you’re wondering wtf happened, kk?, perhaps I can explain. See, I wrote that post, then reopened my word doc and read that critical last chapter again. Just to make sure everything was peachy, and most of it was. Really. The first two thirds of the chapter are fine. And the part I’d added, all good. I still liked the very end.

But something just didn’t sit well with me, almost like something was missing, or off, and that won’t do. The ending to CHERRY must be absolute perfection, such that it resonates so beautifully with the rest of the novel that the resultant oscillation creates a singular vibration that . . . wait, am I talking about CHERRY now, or the Tacoma Narrows Bridge? Hopefully, the former, as the latter is a classic cautionary tale of failed construction.

Eek.

Long story short: these last three days have been a struggle for this writer. What else is new, right? I’m trying to end my novel in a way that suits it, me, Agent X, and any and all subsequent potential agents/editors/readers/reviewers. No pressure, kk, she lied. Truth is, I didn’t/don’t want to let anybody down, but the more I tweaked those final two pages, the further from that coveted sweet spot I seemed to be.

And then, late this afternoon–scratch that, late yesterday afternoon–I thought I had it. Almost. I just needed one sentence, placed just so. . .

It is now closing in on 1 a.m., January 22, 2015. I didn’t write that sentence. I don’t know what I need. My novel isn’t done. What I did do, a couple of hours ago, was thumb through CHERRY and take some notes, and read through my unholy AbsoluteWrite query thread for the novel, copying and pasting some of the comments I’d written. Trying to get my head back in the game, as it were. Which I must, must do, because the only thing all that smooshing and smashing and tweaking and deleting gets me is a bloody ol’ mess on my laptop screen, and we can’t have carnage like that at this stage of the game now, can we?