running to the finish
I've started the last chapter of the book and I've been feeling a bit funny about it. It’s the strange feeling that I’ve been having since I realized that yes, this is the last chapter and after this It’s just some clean up. Sure the book isn’t going to be headed out the publisher until May, but this is pretty much the end of the actual writing.
One thing I’ve learned about myself years ago is that I hate endings. I hate finishing things, especially things that I’m creating. When I worked at the library I was always loathed to finish projects that I was given, dragging them out until the last minute. When I had homework assignments or art pieces I was working on I would linger until I couldn’t any more - or in the case of the artwork, not finish it at all.
It’s a very odd reason why, and it’s possibly an autistic reason as well. If I finish something then it stops existing. The end product is there but there’s no more creation involved. It’s gone from me. There’s nothing more that I can do to it. I don’t feel relieved or proud of myself for finishing it, I feel sad because I don’t have it to work on any more. Finished is ending, it’s in a way a death. It’s no longer connected to me.
Sure the project that I made still exists. This book will still exist once I’m finished with it after all. It will exist more readily than it does sitting on my harddrive, my Google drive, the flashdrive and the binder on my bookshelf. (Redundancy saving is important. I learned this when I was doing my Master’s Thesis and my laptop decided to crash.) It will exist in (hopefully) hundreds and hundreds of different copies. It will not have stopped existing but multiplied in its existence.
But I wouldn’t have control over it any more. It’s become frozen. A nothing. An aspect of my autism is that I need to know what’s going on at all times and try to control it as much as possible. It’s a way that I can understand what’s happening around me and to be sure I know what to expect. The more I know what to expect the less anxious I am. I always live in a state of anxiety this is just one way I control it. When I hand in something I’ve lost control over it.
When this book is finally given to the Publisher all spangled and done I will have lost control of it.
And that’s very scary.
It brings in too many what ifs.
That’s one of the reasons why I like deadlines. If it wasn’t for them I would never get anything done. I to know when it has to be finished because I hate not being on time. Which is what a deadline is for, making sure something gets done on time.
So, this chapter is bittersweet for me. It’s one step closer to being published and holding a book in my hands that I wrote and yet at the same time something that I have worked on for over a year to get done being finished and, in its own way, dying.
One thing I’ve learned about myself years ago is that I hate endings. I hate finishing things, especially things that I’m creating. When I worked at the library I was always loathed to finish projects that I was given, dragging them out until the last minute. When I had homework assignments or art pieces I was working on I would linger until I couldn’t any more - or in the case of the artwork, not finish it at all.
It’s a very odd reason why, and it’s possibly an autistic reason as well. If I finish something then it stops existing. The end product is there but there’s no more creation involved. It’s gone from me. There’s nothing more that I can do to it. I don’t feel relieved or proud of myself for finishing it, I feel sad because I don’t have it to work on any more. Finished is ending, it’s in a way a death. It’s no longer connected to me.
Sure the project that I made still exists. This book will still exist once I’m finished with it after all. It will exist more readily than it does sitting on my harddrive, my Google drive, the flashdrive and the binder on my bookshelf. (Redundancy saving is important. I learned this when I was doing my Master’s Thesis and my laptop decided to crash.) It will exist in (hopefully) hundreds and hundreds of different copies. It will not have stopped existing but multiplied in its existence.
But I wouldn’t have control over it any more. It’s become frozen. A nothing. An aspect of my autism is that I need to know what’s going on at all times and try to control it as much as possible. It’s a way that I can understand what’s happening around me and to be sure I know what to expect. The more I know what to expect the less anxious I am. I always live in a state of anxiety this is just one way I control it. When I hand in something I’ve lost control over it.
When this book is finally given to the Publisher all spangled and done I will have lost control of it.
And that’s very scary.
It brings in too many what ifs.
That’s one of the reasons why I like deadlines. If it wasn’t for them I would never get anything done. I to know when it has to be finished because I hate not being on time. Which is what a deadline is for, making sure something gets done on time.
So, this chapter is bittersweet for me. It’s one step closer to being published and holding a book in my hands that I wrote and yet at the same time something that I have worked on for over a year to get done being finished and, in its own way, dying.