I’m working on the last few stories of Holiday Heat, which means it’s time to start wrapping up storylines for my various characters. I already have a pretty good idea of how the last story is going to go, and I know what I’m going to do for December 29, but there are still some open spaces and some through-lines I have to finish up or pay off.

One that I’m thinking about is Sarah (from Shell Game). She’s gone through a lot over the course of Holiday Heat, and if you’ve been keeping up with the stories you know I left her in a good place. But because she’s shown up several times, I feel it is only fair to give her some closure. I have a vague idea of what I can do, but I just… don’t want to write it.

Why? I don’t know. Maybe I’m sad that I’m going to be saying goodbye to a character for a while. Maybe I’m bored — not with Sarah, but because I know more or less what I have to do there’s no excitement anymore in writing it. I had a similar problem when I wrote one of my fantasy novels (under a different name) — I had an outline, and the closer I came to the climactic scene the less I wanted to write, because I already knew what was going to happen. Or maybe it’s the usual problem — not being able to write because of my depression over not having a job.

Whatever the reason is, I have to get a move on. I need all of these stories finished by Halloween. Yeah, it’s a self-imposed deadline, but a deadline is still a deadline.

By the time I finish Holiday Heat, I will have been working on the project for two full years. That’s a long time. But it’s also a lot of words, and as someone who isn’t a full-time writer (my current full-time job is job hunting, but even before that I had a full-time job) I think it’s a pretty good accomplishment.

Here’s hoping that, by the time this post drops, I’ll have finished off Sarah’s through-line.