Et tu, Muse?

Hello friends. Have you ever gotten near to the end of a project, and all of a sudden every other project is super interesting? Or, in the case of my current brain, all of a sudden, there are new ideas everywhere. I’ve written more new things into my idea file in the last week than probably the last six months combined. Why do we do this? (Or maybe it’s just me?) While I’m close to the end of my revision (we’re firmly in Act 3 now) I still probably have at least a month more, maybe two. And that’s only going to get longer if I get distracted by every shiny thing my brain finds for me. And, holy cow, my brain is actively searching for shiny things. They’re everywhere. And you know that if I gave in and actually switched to one of these new projects, my brain would also give up on that one, or try to redirect me to something else, or decide now is an excellent time for a fanfiction hyperfixation. (oh no, I’m giving myself ideas.) Is this normal? I know other writing friends have this happen, but arguably no writer is normal, so this is a terrible litmus. If you too get distracted in the home stretch or find that you’re actively sabotaging yourself, what do you do to counteract it? My current technique is to tell myself that as soon as I finish my revision I’ll dedicate a month to chaos, where we…

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