Scarily enough (and it really does scare be a bit... a lot... yeah, it's terrifying to stare into the abyss), I can see the end of my manuscript, or MS as it's called in bookland.

I can see it. It's there. And it's unknown.

I've had "an idea for a book" for years.

I've been "writing a book" for months.

But I've never "written a book" before. That just seems odd to me. It kinda gets stuck in my throat when I try to practice saying it. (You know, think back to 7th grade when you practiced signing your name with your crush's last name like you were going to get married? No, just me? Well then...)

I've been tracking my progress by chapter/scene now instead of word count. Once I got over the NaNoWriMo hump of 50k, it was just like, "this is a lot of words." Not only am I tracking my progress, I'm channeling my writing by making a to-do list.

My list now looks like this:

Reorder everything to fit new timeline
Ch 13
Ch 14
finish Ch 16
Ch 18
finish Ch 19
Ch 20
Ch 21
finish Ch 27
finish Ch 35
finish Ch 38
finish Ch 39
finish Ch 42
Ch 43
finish Ch 45

I know 10 things left on this list (since I made it about a week ago) seems like a lot, so how do I see the abyss already?

Well I'll tell you how, Curious George. See all those chapters that say "finish" in front? Yeah, that means I just need to connect a few things or write an opening/closing paragraph for them. BAH! So yeah, I can see that abyss. I'll probably be able to smell it in a few days. I hope it smells like honeysuckles. That is my favorite smell in the entire universe.

All this babbling about almost being done and seeing the abyss of the unknown and blah blah blah does not by any means mean (haha, see what I did there?) that I've forgotten about the editing phase. Duh, I'm an editor.

My naive hope is that since I've been unable to resist editing so much along the way that this phase might have been reduced. At least a little bit. Even just a few days would make me feel less insane.