NaNoPanWe

National Novel Panic Week. I'm 37,500 words in and can probably just knock the whole thing out over the extended Thanksgiving weekend, but I'm running into a problem...

I have no ending.

That's not true. I have an ending.

I have no climax. I've taken my characters to the logical location of the climax, but now they're just sort of there. They have things they need to do, but they're all really boring and I hate writing it, because I'm tired of writing filler. I've set up some elaborate plot devices that need to pay off and I'd rather just end the whole thing with a big explosion, but I can't write a big explosion for 12,500 words and it'd negate the coolness of much of what I've done.

To put it more succinctly, I'm at a point where I have to stop introducing new elements and work with the existing ones and it's boring.

Anybody else run into this trouble? How do you get through it?

It brings on many changes...

Robert Altman dead at 81.

I remember seeing him at the Oscars last March, accepting his lifetime achievement award, and thinking, "Geez, that guy's going to live forever."

His last film was The Prairie Home Companion and it's a fine testament to his meandering style of storytelling, but his finest film in my mind (given that I haven't even seen half of his impressive body of work) will always be MASH.