Well, not quite. But I’m nearly there. I’ve spent this evening going through the manuscript tying up loose ends. You see, all books-in-progress have these. They are the bits were you find yourself struggling, so you move on and vow to come back later to tie this bit of the story in with the groovier bit that you wrote to come afterwards.

In the most ideal World, you would not need to go looking for these breaks, but they happen. Actually, they can be useful because it makes it a little easier to write in references to later plot in a more fluid way. I’ve just been doing that now. I’m happy that I’ve tied up almost all of the loose ends leaving me only with the ending to write. If you get too many loose ends, you end up with jarring scene breaks and plot holes creeping in. Fortunately I haven’t been near that territory for a good many years – it would normally spell the end of a draft it that did happen, and I’d be back writing another draft all the way from the beginning.

Now, this is unusual for me. Usually it is the beginning I labour on the most, with the ending being one of the first things to get done. After all, a finished ending makes it easier to be heading for something certain in the plot development. In this case though, the ending is still in my headf. It should not be too long to go though before I get there. Maybe the title for this post would have been better to have been “Almost done”?

As I’ve talked before, I’m already absent-mindedly plotting the next book idea in my head. It’s a book that I started back in 2004, but it got waylaid. It will eb another change of genre, though rather than to a new genre for me it will be one I last visited at the beginning of 2004. I’m not in a hurry though; there’s a wedding to come in the meantime as well as an edited version of that aforementioned 2004 book. Not to mention that I’ve promised myself a well-deserved one month’s holiday from writing and other tasks. I might get to finish that Wii cheerleading game after all.