Standing at the base of the mountain...

So, last week, just before I got hit by the dreaded Pig Disease, the readers and editorial reports for my next book dropped into my inbox, along with a frighteningly imminent deadline (Douglas Adams on Deadlines: "I love deadlines. I really like the 'whooshing' noise they make as they go past".)
This is always something of a good/bad moment, for me.
On the one hand, it's a sure sign that the end is in sight. Just two or three, or twenty or thirty rewrites, and then the book is done.
On the other ha