The Ending

When does the ending come for you? I had the incredible experience, when I finished Protégé Mistress after a marathon writing session of about 8,000 words (I realize that’s a fairly typical session for some writers but for me that’s a marathon), of writing the ending at the ending. That moment of finishing a book and coming up with its ending will always be a top writing memory, and likely not one I’ll have again. I was so affected by that moment that I actually cursed the ending for my WIP (work in progress), which came to me the other day. No, dammit, I’m not to that part, yet.

Sacrilege! How dare I question the muse? You have to go with it when it comes, and it’s an exciting part to write but it is also something of a relief when you have an ending. I think that’s a typical stress for writers. We get excited enough by characters or a scene to start writing, it starts to develop into a story, and at some point we think, Oh Crap! How is this going to end? I think it’s, for the most part, an irrational worry. The story ends when you’re done telling it. The more rational worry is writing an ending you like and think works well, but to carry this vague stress through a WIP of it just “not ending” doesn’t really have any logic to it. Of course, that doesn’t prevent it. I finished my first short story more than twelve years ago and after an hour long intense writing buzz finally began to fade, I thought, Oh Crap! What if I never think of anything to write again? I still write with that worry, but I’m mostly numb to it.

Like a lot of things in writing, you have to have a good balance. I try to write without worrying about how a story will end, but I do press a little, which keeps my mind working on it, and I think that’s why possible endings start coming to me, sometimes soon after I start a story. Usually I’ll discard them or they’ll turn out to be scenes but not ends. (I think I have a tendency to tighten the framework to keep me focused.) Good possible endings will start to come around two-thirds through, usually. Coincidentally, right about when my irrational Oh Crap! How is this going to end? worry gets ratcheted up.