It you talk to a lot of authors, you’ll know that the biggest problem most have is right at the end of the book. More specifically, at least in my experience, is just before the end of the second act. It’s where a lot of people get into trouble.

I will admit, I’ve had the same problem, especially in the past when I didn’t heavily outline like I do today, but now, it’s a whole lot better. I don’t slow down at the end, I accelerate. Now, I sprint to the ending.I thought about that today as I’m right at the end of my most recent book. I put in about 6k this morning as usual and got through a chapter and a half. Life was good and I was moving on to actual “work” work that I had to do, yet after getting through those things, I really started to get the bug to get back and write.

Unlike a lot of people, I know exactly how my book is going to end. I’ve known it since before I started. I knew just about everything about the book, except the end of the dreaded second act. That’s a problem for a lot of writers because the second act is the longest part of the book and therefore, it’s the hardest to write. It’s the part with all of the twists and the turns and the red herrings and the subplots and that makes it a real pain for most authors, myself included. I’m usually pretty good there, right up until the end when I have to transition from the middle to the end and start tying up all of the loose ends.

That’s where I tend to mess up and I need to slow down to make sure I got them all. The beginning of the story and the end of the story are easy, generally speaking. It’s where the story is the most focused. It’s either set-up or wrap-up. That’s not hard to do. It’s everything that  comes in between that’s a problem. It’s why it’s called the “marathon of the middle”. It’s where all of the hard work comes in.

Yet I was past that this morning. I was tumbling past the second act and into the third and with just three chapters to go, plus a short epilogue, I was really sailing back into well-known territory. I finished off the chapter I’d stopped mid-way through yesterday and plunged right into the next and finished it with just over 6k, which is a perfectly adequate working day for me. I closed everything down, got up and went to work on other work-related things, but after an hour or two, there was something itching in my brain, like I knew where I was going and I just wanted to get back at it. Therefore, as soon as I was out of things that just had to be done right now, I dove right back in and completed another chapter, bringing my daily total over 10k.

I have noticed over the last couple of books that I always get a tremendous surge at the end. The last book I finished, back in mid-December, the last day, I went back late and just  cranked out the final chapter because I just wanted it to be done. It was the biggest single writing day on that book, just as 10k today is the biggest day to date on this one. If nothing catastrophic happens tomorrow, I’ll be done and on to the next thing.

Yet none of this is because I’m tired of the project or the characters, I love them. The next book I write is part two of this trilogy and I’m excited to get back into it. I think that’s really the explanation, I get excited at the end to work on something new. This is especially the case when I finish a series, because my mind has been thinking about what comes next from about the half-way point in the last book. I want to get working on the next project, no matter what it is.

I put down the first 500 words or so of the last chapter, just to finish up my train of thought, then I had to forcibly put it away. I could go back and work some more right now but, I’ll be honest, my hands hurt. They really do. I’d done over 3k on other non-writing projects before I even got started this morning and now, this article is going to be another thousand or so. I just had to get it down when this is fresh, even though it’s going to put me over 14,000 words written today. That’s a lot, even for me. I don’t do this very often and when I do, it’s because I get into this writing flow state at the end of a book and just want to see it through. Tomorrow I’m going to wake up early and jump on it so that I can finish the project with style. I knew I was going to wrap it up this week, I have the last book in the last trilogy to start editing next and that means reading the entire 4-book series cover to cover. That’s going to be exciting too. I like what I write and now, I get to dedicate a couple of days reading the nearly half-million words I wrote last year in this series. I can’t wait. It brings it one step closer to publication and that’s always a great feeling.

This is the kind of drive that it takes to be a writer. You do it because you love it. It makes your heart sing just to put words on a page and tell an engaging story with interesting characters. I’ve got two more books in this series and I’m already thinking about what comes next. It’s one of the very few stand-alone books I ever write and that’s going to be fun. I can’t wait.