The End is in Sight??? Really?

When you've been working on a novel for four years, it can be disorienting, unbelievable and just plain scary to realize that you're at the end of the writing process. When it has already taken so long, how can it ever be finished? And yet if a book is going to get published, you have to reach the point eventually where you say "This is good enough. Maybe I could rewrite it better two years from now, but it's really good as it is and two years from now I'll write another more brilliant novel."

My particular story has gone through a lot of turmoil. I spent a year and a half writing my first plot, realized it was trash, threw it out, spent a summer mulling over the story and being frustrated that I couldn't write anything, found a beautiful new idea and spent the next year rewriting it, then realized that it still had some issues, so mulled over it some more and revised and edited for the next year...

And suddenly here I am. Going through the final-but-on revision (I hope!). I've got some last-chance readers lined up, and then after making sure that they can all read it and like it and are not confused... off it goes on the agent hunt.

Then, hopefully, I finally get to start something new.