The "Finish Writing the Book" Experience

Let me tell you a little about my "finish writing the book" experience I'm having. I've been writing the closing chapters of Mythos for weeks now. Whereas I allowed my characters to drive much of the earlier part of the book, yours truly has directed events leading up to and through the climax. And it's an odd thing. I see how it ends more and more every day, and my fingers are tap-tap-tapping furiously on the keyboard to get the story there. The more I see, the more prolific the writing becomes. Yep - at the end, I have received "total consciousness", which is nice. Thanks for that riff, Bill Murray.

As the words find their way on screen, the most bizarre ideas come to mind - roads along which I might take my characters, avenues with all sorts of twists and turns, and certainly littered with potholes. As this happens, I envision my characters looking up at me as if I'm in the stratosphere. They dutifully go about whatever business I set before them, but every now and then I catch them shaking their heads. For every unplanned direction I take them, for every shiny new obstacle I place before them, they've got to deal with it, and I need to help them. And in every case, this extends the story. This is why it's taken longer to get to the honest-to-goodness final chapter.

The last ten chapters of Mythos are the "big resolve". All the activity leading up to these chapters was a whole lot of simmering and the occasional bubbling over of conflict. The last ten are the rolling boil, and the foamy water is slopping over the sides of the pot. I knew where I wanted to be ten chapters ago, and with every chapter I wrote, I discovered even more details I needed to cover in the remaining pages. It's been a serious blast and is the sum total reason why I write.
 
So now, I can finally look myself in the mirror and declare, I am writing the final chapter. Truly. Well, unless I decide to do the epilogue thing. But that's it. Absolutely. There is this one loose end that might prove troublesome, so maybe.... No. It's the end.

Oh, and when it's all done, I'll combe the final three chapters into one last Birth of a Novel post. *sigh* What ever shall I do with my time?