The Ending

A blog that I was reading about advice for writers said that a writer should write the ending of his or her novel first. I always know the ending of a novel that I am working on and of late the ending of a short story although I may not know exactly how the characters will get there. I just create them and let them loose. That may not be how other writers do it, but that is my way. I hate it when they do what they want to do instead of what I want them to do but the ending is always the same. Joe always ends up with Jill or Sally ends up will Sadie or whatever. What I never know is the information they learn along the way. I learn right along with the characters.

There has been many times that I know a character will do something but not for the reason I assumed it would be. I think that happens in real life except in fiction we get to study them a bit before they act or after wards. For instance, my ex-husband trashed my house in my absence last year. I was astonished and never really understood completely why although I have hints. If it was a story I would have been forewarned by traveling with the character before he did it and after wards. I have a feeling the ex-husband is dealing with issues that have nothing to do with me. As a writer I would have been able to play with it in fiction.

I wrote a response to a letter to the editor supposedly written by a fifth grader yesterday in the Record Searchlight. I suspected it was not but by a child but by a parent. The letter writer used the movie, "The Princess Bride", to make a point about reality. Reality has many different sides that we can never see as a human being in the drama that is being played out and a movie is a very thin slice of that drama. Fiction is a more satisfying portrayal of what is happening but is still not the complete truth. Nothing is. I am still learning about things that happened to me as a teenager. I see things that I did not understand back then but now with more information of life understand more. Its a complex business. I cautioned her not to derive her sense of reality from the movies.

As in novels, life has only one ending. That is an easy one. The train track that we are going down at this increasingly fast speed ends the same way. Each of us, no matter how much we hope differently, will die. It is the middle that changes and that is where the pen hits the paper or the fingers hits the keys. The is the whole crux of the matter. A few times when I wrote murder mysteries, which I so love to read, I knew the what the crime or murder was but rarely how it was done. I could come up with why and even who the murderer was. I was short on the details on how the crime was done. The crime was the perfect crime for even I couldn't figure out how it was done. In real life, I was too aware that most criminals are stupid.

I love it when the reasons we do things are a mystery even from ourselves. I see this happen over and over again especially when I worked as a social worker. I see mothers who live controverted lives in their households so they wouldn't find out that their husbands were molesting the children because he was bringing in big paychecks. Ugly as it was, they were unaware consciously they were doing this although it was plain to me. People live lives on several layers all of the time. It is called denial. Heavens know I have been there on many occasions.

Writers live in denial too and that is why we should all have the edit pencil at hand or the delete key handy. We put things away for a time and return and see things we missed before glaring at us. Some writers call it "killing our babies" because we have to delete some of our best writing because it just does not belong in the story. Some writers put it aside to use in another story or book which I think is a great idea.

Time is a great healer for many things in real life but it gives the much needed detachment for our work and helps us spot things we would not have otherwise have seen before. It is that way in life as I wrote I understand things that happened to me in the past because we change. Again, we need it too in our writing although we do have to let our work go and start new stories, books or we get mired in the traps of perfection which is not a good thing for writers, a little but not a swamp that buries us.

My friend Ted who writes memoirs always knows the ending of his books. He is alive when he starts his books and he is alive when he ends it. He likes to say his books are his celebration of his sobriety. He is uncovering one layer after another as he descends into the madness that was his life for so long. Once he exhausts these layers and the mine is finally bare, he figures he will start to write novels or something. He isn't worried. The vein of gold that he is working on is very rich.

I think that is better than Forest who sends his servant-wife out there into the world to have adventures with who knows who and what and then makes her report them in detail so he can write a book about them. I often wonder who takes care of the children when she is out there having adventures. Forest can do that because he is good in turning out good prose, but Ted is right when he says his fiction is surface fiction. His characters rarely understand what is going on around them. They just enjoy the world in lurid phases and enjoy the good life. What the heck, people buy his books but I notice there is always a bunch in the second hand stores. No one seems to want to keep them. Forest always knows the end of his books and after he talks to his servant-wife, he knows the middle. I am curious about his servant-wife's sense of self or lack of one that she is willing to do anything he wants. She even wears clothes that he picks out for her that is very suggestive. She is still young enough to wear them but what happens when she gets too old? Will he find willing women? Experience tells me that if you have enough money you will.

I enjoy writing. I think one should write the way it is the most enjoyable. Of course, most writers don't depend on their earnings to pay the rent or house payment and put food in the fridge. Forest is the exception as Ted is. Most even with books to their credit have day jobs. That is why being a writer has been an occupation for the upper classes. It is certain that I don't depend on it for if I did I would be homeless. There is lots of advice out there for writers. That very fact used to appall me because I thought there must be a lot of writers out there making a living. Now, I try not to think about it and just do what I want to do and have some fun doing it. I think one should always know the end of a story or novel as one knows the end of life but like everything else, it isn't necessary so in fiction. In life, I am afraid nothing you can do is going to get you out of that date with the cemetery no matter what religion you follow tells you. Sorry....