Within Sight of the End... Maybe

I'm catching up on my blog reader and came across this in Spyscribbler's Blog:

I'm just waiting to finish so I can move on to the next project. I'm even waiting for that and one more project to be finished, because I need a dose of Shiny New Idea Joy.

And I thought, Oh, man, that's exactly where I am too!

I am THIS close to finishing a story that was due at the end of February [hides under keyboard] and it's balking again. I've been dry since around Christmas, haven't been able to write anything since my New Year's Eve story for Torquere, but I've finally gotten going again and I'm almost done. I got the second-to-last scene finished, where the action peaks and the good guys defeat the bad guy and the external conflict is all over with, and I'm a page or so into the last scene where the relationship firms up, the reader sees how things are, what the fall-out's going to be, and how things are likely to go from here, a nice clinch, etc. But I stopped and looked back at second-to-last and I'm frowning.

Is that what I really want? Does it work? Did what the good guys do balance what the bad guy did? Is it anticlimatic? Does it just sort of deflate with a depressed hiss rather than banging through the climax? Do I need to rewrite that part? Do I need to completely rework how the good guys deal with the bad guys? Do I need to rework what the bad guy does before that? With much acking and headdesking and depressed staring.

I could probably wrap this thing up in a few hundred more words, just bull on through and finish it and that's that. But the story's already been paid for (not me -- it was a charity thing), I've felt like crap about it for just over six months now, and after all this time I want the finished product to be as good as I can make it. On the plus side, I only promised a minimum of 3K words, and I'm a bit over 15K, so my very patient patron is getting her money's worth, even if horribly late. :/ But I'm looking at it and thinking of ripping out the last three thousand or so and I really don't want to and I'm starting to hunt around for a cliff to throw myself off of.

I also have a deadline on the 15th (with an idea, thank goodness, and a couple of pages started) and a short piece due for Torquere's anniversary promotion (mine's going up on the 30th so they'll probably want it a week before) and I have an idea for that too, although nothing written. And I have a few other stories I'd like to get back to, and more ideas I want to dive into.

I think mostly, though, I just want to move on to fresh territory. Anyone else feel like that? Where you're so mired in your current projects that you just want to move to a new state, change your name, do whatever you have to for a fresh start?

Like SS said, I'm in dire need of a dose of Shiny New Idea Joy. But mostly I need to finish this story.

Angie