According to my calendar, I should be writing my final chapter today. Instead, I wrote the penultimate chapter. It's only 10:30, I could hunker down and throw myself into the next chapter. It's a first draft, after all, rough and dirty. Plus, I'd kinda like to find out what happens when these four characters finally sort it all out.

But I'm not allowing myself to write it. Because I want to. Too much. I want to be finished. I love finishing. And for those who think a book-a-year novelist is crazy-fast, consider this: I finish only once a year. And 2010 will mark the first time since 1995 that I have not truly come to the end of a novel. That's 365 days without the one exquisite work moment I get.

Yet even if I did write that chapter today, I wouldn't be finished. I have a month of revisions ahead on what is shaping up to be a 95,000-to-100,000 word novel. It still won't be finished, but it will be off my desk then and onto my editor. Assuming -- hoping! praying! -- it's deemed D&A (delivery and acceptance), I'll get paid. And if that doesn't count as finishing, I don't know what does.

Happy New Year. Be well. Be safe. I try to stay off the Internet on weekends, so I'll see you in 2011.