It's done.  I've finished.  My novel is written.  The last word is "after."  This could possibly be called the first draft but I don't really write in drafts - I've been back over sections many times and have done so many rewrites that the draft number is lost.  This doesn't mean it won't get worked on again - it means I need to leave it alone for a while.  Weeks, or possibly months might go by before I'll be ready to do The Big Edit.
I should be over the moon and dancing about in joy and all that stuff called happiness.  Really, I just feel very sad.  I've worked harder on this novel than I have on any other work and I just feel hollow.
I think I need to go and lie under a tree for a while and look at the sky.

A new chapter out of nowhere, unplanned, not even hinted at in my creative universe - and it just fell out of my fingers as if it was dying to be written!  How did this happen?  For over a year I've struggled and struggled and struggled with this novel.  I've written and rewritten and rewritten.  I've made notes and more notes and more notes and even notes of notes.  I've sweated and cried and shouted and blustered and lain awake in silence for hours at night.  I've stomped around the local squares with my sore back, my sore foot, my sore head, my sore neck, my sore shoulders - my whole damn body sore, thinking and thinking and thinking and trying to work it out and failing.  Oh, God, and the feelings of failure - WHY am I a writer, WHY am I writing this bloody book that no one will ever read, what POSSESSED me to even THINK this story might be interesting.  All this heartache - but also all the joys when finally something works, when something I've written, read back, is suddenly beautiful.  When I can not only see the character but get inside their head and feel what they feel.  When the plot actually makes sense.  When there actually is a plot.
So where did this new chapter come from?  I had originally ended Part III at the exact point that I ended Part II - just from a different point of view.  This had been planned.  It was always going to be like this (well, once I'd actually decided to structure a Part III and this particular POV into the novel).  When the new chapter suggested itself to me (see my last post), I had no idea it was going to work so well.  The conversations just fell out of my fingers.  Ten breezy, easy pages, all wrapping up the novel to a brilliant, satisfactory but also wildly surreal point - why only NOW?!  Why couldn't this ease of writing have come sooner, like, you know, about a year ago?  Is it because I only now know my novel well enough to know how to end it? 
In that case, all my struggles have been worth it.  I have found the near-perfect ending.
Now I only have to worry that it comes too late, that the novel takes too long to reach this point and that there isn't enough of a hint that it's coming.  But this is a flaw in my writing that I've always had and have never managed to resolve.  At the very least, the mist has begun to clear.

Sometimes it pay to listen to your own advice (see image below.)  Despite the fact that it would entail an immense amount of work, I went back to the beginning of Part III, which I’d been so relieved to finish several weeks ago.  I was going awry in my final two chapters because of subtle faults within these previous chapters (numbers 34 – 38).  Working on these chapters yet again has paid off:  my character had a major dilemma which he couldn’t resolve.  He wasn’t actually supposed to resolve it:  it has no resolution.  It’s not possible for there to be a resolution – but I found one.  Right out the blue!  I LOVE it when this happens – it’s the imagination overdrive.  You’re cruising along, having survived all the bumps and potholes, and then you discover another gear.  Driving metaphors notwithstanding (I can’t drive, by the way), this changes everything.  The blurriness of the story has suddenly cleared.  My character’s motivation is finally as sharp as the proverbial blade.
If this wasn’t enough, further revelations were waiting for me later in the day.  I went for my late afternoon walk (to breath in those rich rush hour fumes) and wasn’t enjoying myself much:  my foot was hurting again and the plane tree fluffies made my eyes itch.  I don’t want to think about pain, I thought, I want to think about my novel.  So I complied and the brand new scene I had earlier realised needed to be added into the novel suddenly exploded into my head.  It was a scene that satisfied all the specs that I had so far failed to attain:  it was surreal;  it tied up ALL the loose ends;  it showed rather than explain what had happened;  it removed the “dumb heroine” aspect from the final chapters ....... the list goes on!  Part III will be one chapter longer and the final two chapters will be cut down to an atmospheric, image-laden, no-talk-zone one chapter – which is exactly what I wanted.
Suddenly I’ve got my ending.  Suddenly it’s powerful.  It’s magical.  It’s got a wow-factor.  Suddenly the novel ends the way  want it to end, not with a domestically dull whimper and a bad joke but a simplicity that captures the mood of the novel and transports you beyond.
Blimey.  Now I just have to write all this.

I’m at the end of my novel.  The last two chapters have been written.  The epilogue has begun.  I’m nearly done.  I’ve been trying to follow my advice – not to rush the ending – but as I sank into a very dark Thursday gloom, I realised that I was going to have to chuck those last two chapters and begin them again.  I’ve started the 2nd last chapter about four times, rewriting and rewriting until I thought I finally had it right.  But trailing around under a freezing cold leaden sky on Friday, I found the courage to look into the abyss:  that place you go when you realise everything you’ve written in the last two or three weeks is crap. 
So:  as much as I really want to leap about cheering that I’ve finished the first draft (though some of it is second and some about tenth, but let’s not quibble ... I’ve not actually reached the end of the novel in any previous draft) – I’m going to have to go back and rethink those chapters.  I could just leave them.  I could just say, hey, I reached the end.  That’s the first draft done.  It’s not perfect but then first drafts never are.  I’ll just leave it for a bit, as I usually do, then come back to it and fix it up ..... but that’s the easy way out.  It would be much harder to confront the garbage and try to do something about it NOW, when the end is so close.  If I leave it and walk away, it'll niggle for months until I'm just exhausted by the whole thing and so depressed I won't want to work on it ever again.
Advice to self:  it doesn’t matter how long the ending takes.  It’s not like I’ve got a deadline.  And it’s not like there are people out there dying for me to turn my novelette collection into a paperback (which is my next Big Job)(amongst other things.)  And I’ve read far too many novels where it’s obvious the writer got bored and just hurried the ending, dashing off something in a day.  It's easy to wrap up lose ends - but HOW you wrap them up is an art in itself.

I want the reader to walk away feeling faintly warm and fuzzy but also chilled to the bone.  So I'm not asking much of myself.  Just the impossible.