Stick a Fork in It

I'm done--such deceptive words. Is the end ever THE END? We all know a story goes on after the final word. If I like a book, my pace slows, and I savor every word, reading at the speed of an inebriated snail [an escargot]. This draft of a new WIP doesn't yet have an ending. The closets needed organizing [three times]. The university Mock Trial Team needed a kick-off party. Shell needed six walks yesterday and her toy bin reorganized three times.

As a painter, I step away from a painting when a chill comes over me. Seriously, the muscles in my upper body quiver. I sense the painting's done. I walk away, pleased, ready to begin a new one--which reminds me of a lyric from Semisonic's song Closing Time: "Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end..." Maybe none of those paintings are finished. Maybe their endings are only the beginning of a future painting.

Do y'all think we ever finish our stories? Similar themes, situations, places reemerge because we aren't ever ending anything? Are we all end-o-phobic?

The ending of this new WIP is driving me batty. The end is near--it's called a deadline. Maybe the end's buried somwhere in Chapter 18. Anyway, at least the apartment's organized.

So, how do you know when you're finished? When's your story over? What makes an ending, an ending?

The End.

THE END

Words turn into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and eventually the logical structure of a story appears. But when does it stop? On the last day of a novel class I’ve been teaching a student asked, “How do we know we’ve reached the end?”

I thought about this—no one in the class had reached an end, but how did I know that? The simple, flippant answer is, it’s over when everyone is dead. But that’s not very satisfying. All the characters in the students’ novels-in-progress were still on the brink of trouble. There was no resolution to the main problem. I thought about my own novel-in-progress, which now has an end. I know it is the end. How? The protagonist has survived a long, hard journey and she is not dead. She’s alive. She’s okay. For now.

I thought about my current life and the difficulties I’ve been going through the past few months. For a moment I thought things were over (I’ve added melodrama here for effect, things were not anywhere near over—so don’t worry). It was not the end. And even though some of those difficulties are “over” now, there will be more as long as I am alive—that’s life, right? Life is not the same as fiction, right?

A week after class I dined with a wise philosopher friend (always useful to have one). We talked of life, literature, art. I told him how hard things have been, I told him about my novel, I told him about my student’s question. This is what he said: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”

Endings

This year--with all its blather and bomp--is ending. The year that Sarah Palin published a book, that we might have gotten health care for the country, that J.K. Rowlings didn't publish a book, that the earth got a little warmer, the year in which we're trying to figure out if we like reading books on a small electronic box.

I'm going down to Stockholm, WI, where I have an old farmhouse on the edge of town under the bluffs. I'm going to walk in the deep snow, maybe out on the ice of Lake Pepin, see how the eagles are coming with their ginormous nest (big enough to fit a bear), and watch the fire crinkle away in front of me for a few hours. Then I will close the house down for the season. It's a relief and a sadness to shut off the water, turn the heat way down, and lock the door.

But endings are like that. I'm approaching the ending of a book and, surprisingly, I'm finding myself slowing down. I've enjoyed writing this book, and I'm nervous I can't quite pull off the ending I've envisioned for it, and so I'm lingering in this world for a while longer.

Endings are like that. You close the door and walk away. You write the final word and turn off the computer. You drink a glass of champagne and salute all that was and all that is to come, knowing we will all continue to read books, whatever form they come in, and we will all move through our endings with sadness and relief.

Happy New Year!

S.E. Hinton

I spent Saturday teaching an all-day workshop on writing YA fiction. Fun, but exhausting. At some point during that day we were talking about S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders, a book which continues to echo in so much contemporary YA fiction. A couple of years ago Hinton published a collection of stories for adults and was interviewed at that time by Vanity Fair. In the interview she uses the term "first-person narrative once removed," which I suspect means a peripheral narrator. She also talks about the importance of endings; like our Mary Logue, Hinton savors that final image. I think I'll rustle up a copy of the story collection, Some of Tim's Stories, and acquaint myself with that once-removed first person.

Left with Hope

I think there are "happy" endings and then there are satisfying endings. I'm especially aware of the latter, because when one is writing mysteries, your readers let you know if they don't feel you have answered all the questions.

I would say happy endings are when you come to the end of the book, close it, and feel that there is hope in the world. Which doesn't mean everything has turned out the way you wanted it to at the end of the book. I think an ending should both give a sense of closure--that this story is done, and a sense of the world of the book continuing, that life goes on for these characters.

One thing I'm aware of in writing the end of a book is what is the last image I want to leave the reader with--what is my parting gift to them.

Finis

Would someone please care to define "Happy Ending"? What are the elements that are present when you're satisfied with a book's conclusion?

Just asking. Thanks.