Why do I always stay up until 3am and then START writing?

I blame my mother.

I discovered recently, while chatting with my mom via skype (yay 2 cents a minute to the US from Japan!) that she also stays up ridiculously late to get work done and finds that she works best a. once everyone else is asleep and b. when she's coming down to the wire and has to produce quickly in order to meet a deadline.

Which means I just had a huge bit of my eccentricity explained away by genetics. Well damn. That's boring. But, also interesting. The nature vs. nurture debate is always an interesting one, and I find it strange that until this recent conversation with my mom I'd had no idea that she had the habit of staying up late to get work done after others had gone to bed. (I did know about the last minute deadline bit, but still.) It took me 28 years to find this out, and exhibit the exact same behavior. It strikes me as strange to think that there's a night owl gene, but that would appear to be the case.

Right, so that said... True to form and genetic inheritance, it is indeed 3am and it's time for me to get back to work on my novel. I'm at 57,208 words and I'd like to get to 60 or 65k by Tuesday at midnight (and more importantly get to the end of the plot). Things are indeed wrapping up. I think it's quite reasonable to think that I can wrap up the plot somewhere around the 60,000 word mark. I like where things are going but... I need to make sure I don't freeze up at the end. Endings are so difficult. Generally, once you set everything up they play themselves out pretty nicely. As I recently said to my partner in everything "Writing the ending is like setting up a really elaborate set of dominoes, it takes a lot of careful planning and painful work to set it up, but once you flick the first domino it generally takes care of itself." As to whether or not that quote is of my own making I'm not entirely sure. At this point I've read many a motivational essay on writing and it's possible I've snagged it from somewhere without realizing it, but at the time I considered it original and I can't actually remember reading it anywhere.

So, that's my one nugget of writing wisdom for the day.

Which means now I should get to work... I don't know... is everyone else completely asleep? **hears metaphorical crickets chirping and rain, wind and hail pattering on window** yeah I think so. Better get to it then.