The plastering is finished, the electrician is fixing the lights even as I write and if you look hard you can glimpse possible shades of blue (possible shades of blue seem perfect for a writer's room). My house-shaped shed is on the way to completion -- there's the painting to do and the floor to lay and then the job is pretty much done.
Except, most of us know better than that. The end of a building job is always just beyond reach, always the beginning of next week, rather than the end of this. The same is true when you are writing a novel, when the finishing line can be a bit of a mirage. In literary terms, I feel like someone who has just handed in a second draft: all the errors and shortcomings of the first one have (hopefully) been eliminated, the story is tighter, the focus is sharper, so for a brief period you can lull yourself into thinking that your agent (or publisher) will pat you on the back and set to work getting the darn thing into print.
So just as writers brace themselves for the e-mail that identifies a whole new set of problems which nobody has spotted/mentioned before (the suspense flags two thirds of the way through, the hero is completely unsympathetic/unlikeable, none of the jokes are funny), so I am waiting for the electrician to tell me that the armoured cable is too short to reach from the house, or that the sensor on the security light is knackered.
You need stamina as a writer, and resilience, and bucketfuls of hope, because it's not over until it's over....
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