Downfall

So I'm finally at the point in one of my stories where I love it, but I hate it. I wanna rewrite the entire thing, while still maintaining the key elements of it. The 476 page document has taken me 8 years to write: and I'm almost done. But because it's taken so long to complete: the writing style and the story has changed as I've gotten older and gained wisdom. The beginning is juvenile: novice work. But the last part is amazing. I'm astonished with myself. Now the first three hundred something pages just need to be re-written to match. I feel so stuck though. Because I know as soon as I start to re-write it, create a second draft: I'm going to change it into something else. Create new ideas and implement new obstacles to hurl at my unfortunate characters. The story itself is fine the way it is...but the writing style changes and it bugs me. I want it to be consistently exciting. I don't wanna tear it apart and re-build it as something new... but I feel like that's exactly what will happen.

You know my life is just oh so terrible when the biggest concern on my mind is what's gonna happen when I re-write my stupid novel. I really shouldn't complain. But after 8 years... yeah... It needs to be done so I can continue writing the other 50,000 stories that come to me in the form of nightmares. Maybe then I could finally get some freakin' sleep and not be such an insomniac. Yeah, cause that's really gonna happen. I just wish I wasn't so torn about this. I'm so close to the end of the story: I know what I want to happen. Now I just have to make it all fit: manipulate everything so it turns out how I want it (Authors have amazing power because you can't do that too often in real life...). The ending is there: it always has been. But I cannot, will not and shall not put the ending into words before the journey is written and written correctly. What can I say? I'm a control freak. The saddest part is: this is something that will never be published. No one else is ever going to read this story. I don't want it to be read and I don't want it published, never have. I just want it down, in writing, on paper, brought down to size.

So someone please tell me why I'm so anxious for this to be complete if I'm not going to be doing anything with it? Why I'm so ready to be done with it: not that I'm exasperated about it, just that I'm excited to be at the finish line. I don't even think I can call this the finish line. Not really. I've been toying with the idea of a series for a long time with this story. It's just open ended enough that I can make it work. I even have two sequels started for it. But this one, the first one: Downfall, needs to be done.