/lit/ - Literature

>>20345513
Why can I never finish anything? I wrote over 100,000 words on my novel, (though I knew it would need a rewrite) but I get to within 3-8 chapters of the climax and ending, and I just stop, can't bring myself to finish, can't figure out how to make the last pieces fit.
So I start a rewrite, using the original as draft. This time I get to 50,000 words and stop.
Why am I like this? How can this be fixed?

>>20318590
Once again I am asking for someone to help my autistic brain understand POV and tense:

>The desert is a wasteland. Here, at a dusty section, the Silk Stocking Cafe stood alone in the barren wastes. A buxom waitress of flickering neon flashed red and turquoise in the gray morning light. The intersection had once been a bustling thoroughfare, an essential stop for travelers on their way to California, complete with motels, restaurants, and auto services. When the interstate came through, there was no need for the stop, and the junction shrank to ruins. Only the Silk Stocking Cafe remained.
>Catie entered and tapped her finger on the hostess podium. "Uhh, hello?" she called, annoyed that she had to wait.
>"With you in just a sec, hun," a fat waitress called from the kitchen. Catie sighed. She looked around the café. It looked like trash. But it was their only option

So this is a made-up example, similar to something I'm writing. My questions are
If my novel is in past tense, am I still allowed to make general statements like "The desert is a wasteland." This is present tense, but saying "the desert WAS a wasteland" implies that it changed, so that can't be right, right?
Second, Catie is a dunce and would have no idea about the interstate cutting off travel to old highway junctions, or the history of the cafe. So this is information she would not know. I want my story to be 3rd person limited, is it okay to have sections like this to provide information she doesn't actually have?
Thank.

How do you all organize outlines and ideas in general?
I've started my rewrite in Scrivener and I like it for the most part, but I have chapter outlines in google doc - I feel like I need a spreadsheet for that. Meanwhile I end up writing random notes fucking everywhere and don't know how to organize them.