Storybuzz

I’ve just written the last line of my current manuscript of choice.

I could say it just like that, as if it’s some big, mythic event. It’s more like a beer, actually. Just a nice little buzz, au naturale.

It sounds very dramatic to say it like that, “the last line…” but in reality it’s about the eighth time. Not so giddy for the sake of the ending, more that I got it right. Each time you get a little closer, and while you have some recognition that yes you’re getting closer, the journey’s just not ended yet. You look around, you don’t know where exactly, but “not here.”

There some nagging twinge or emotional scoff. When you feel that, it means you’ve come up with a perfectly normal, pat, expected, obligatory ending. Trash in other words. Your natural deviance is begging for something interesting, and you’ve even managed to disgust yourself with such a trite, warm, wet cereal bowl of an ending. Good if you’re starving, maybe. How many good books wither on the last page due to a lukewarm ending? Too many. I can’t remember any at the moment, but there you go. The ending is the thumb tack on your wall. It holds your idea up there to demand attention among the billion other stories that are already better than yours anyway. Don’t embarrass yourself any more than you have to, you know?

Besides, if you’ve been toning and perfecting every page up until this point, does it make any sense to stick with a pat ending that only provides the coherent bare minimum of what is expected? Write it again, just to be certain. You have to be able to like your story enough the make a commitment to it, and your level of satisfaction with your own ending is a big indication. After about twelve tries, I think I’ve finally found the one that will stick. No, I don’t think it, I know it. That’s how you can be sure it’s done. You have the fat kid with the fat cake, and the fat lady sings.

One day I’m going to make that into an illustrated diagram, really I am. It’s going to feature a huge, corset-popping broad in the bull horns holding the spear. Seriously. Don’t flub your ending. She will break you. Like big Russian bull.