Resistance is Futile, Stupid Novel

I'm in a bloody-knuckled brawl with my book. Finishing is like walking a mile up a steep hill over broken glass . . . on my bare hands.

The keyboard resists. The words give me the finger. Good ideas mock me.

But I'm slugging it out.

My goal is to (finally) have a finished draft by the end of next week. It won't be exactly what I want, but it will be close to something I'm happy with. And, having typed 'The End,' I'm pretty confident that the following rewriting will go more smoothly. I simply need a fully completed something in hand first.

The minute I have that 'completed something' in hand, I plan to start crafting a query letter. And I plan, very soon after that, to start pestering agents.

An interesting lesson that I'm too-slowly learning in this process is that if I don't have a stated goal, a stated deadline, for each phase of the work, it will take much longer than I'd hoped. It always takes longer than I hope it will, but the situation's worse without goals/deadlines written down somewhere.