Done. Almost.

I thought about just leaving this blog post as the title on its own, because it just about sums up everything I have to say. But that seemed a bit... stingy. Oh, by the way, I haven't had much sleep. So don't expect the right words in the right places or anything. (Or rather, as I typed that originally, "don't expect the right words inntb eh righy placex". Which, coincidentally, is one of my favourite Basque proverbs.)

I don't know if you've seen the film 28 Days Later. It's not one of my top ten... but there's a moment when the hero's making his way through the apocalypse-torn, disease-ridden world and he goes into a church and up some stairs, and the camera focuses on some graffiti: NIGH, it says, in huge spray-painted letters. And then the shot pans up, and it says above that, FUCKING. And then EXTREMELY. It takes longer than you think to get to THE END IS...

So my edits were - OK, are, so much for having finished, I've got to start again at the beginning now - a bit like that. Last week I worked really bloody hard (up at six, worked till four, started again after dinner, till midnight) thinking that that day I would get there. It wasn't till yesterday this morning, at ten past three, that I finally wrote the last sentence. I was too tired even to feel particularly triumphant. But now I have a new draft. Not the final draft. Probably not even close. But those problems, which seemed like a brick wall, did have handholds, after all. I'm not sure that, having climbed up, I won't have to inch my way painstakingly back down again and find another route - but right now I can take a breather, hoping I'm on the right track.

Sleep. Read. Do some laundry.

I did tell my agent that she'd have the MS by the end of the week, though. So tomorrow I will be back to work. No doubt, this time tomorrow, I will be staring helplessly at my computer screen and wondering if I could just cut straight to the middle of the book. Actually - there's a thought...

That last sentence probably won't be the real, final, actual last sentence. But the end is extremely fucking nigh.