When You Write The End

Writing a good ending is more important than any other part of your book. It informs the reader's final decision. Your beginning and middle could be pure gold but if your ending falls flat the rest of your story loses its luster.

That's a lot of pressure.

But it's also an exciting challenge.

I've never actually experienced that 'The End' euphoria. I've never written something through from start to finish chronologically. I don't know if this is normal - I only know this is how it comes out of me...in pieces I have to frankenstein together until they form a cohesive narrative.

Thank goodness I have a nerd's love for puzzles!

But the problem with this is that I don't experience the journey of my story until after it's written. When you already know the ending it feels somehow anticlimactic and the only thing I care about is that it isn't that way for my readers.

Hence the lingering fear as I send my current project off for its first round of critiques.

If my ending is weak, my whole book is weak and {in the spirit of Halloween} what is scarier than that??!?

Wish me luck, friends, as I navigate this next stage of the novel-writing game. I'm going to need all the support I can find!

  

{click the image above to see all the #write31days posts}

Thank you to everyone who has followed along with me on this Write 31 Day Challenge. It has certainly tested my will and forced me to look at how and why I write. It has stretched and bettered me. It has left me feeling exhausted. And yet...I feel somehow invigorated too. The practice of daily writing has geared me up for November's even bigger challenge of NaNoWriMo which begins promptly at midnight tonight. I feel completely unprepared - all my prep time was eaten up by this blogging challenge - but I'm excited to dive into another project and give myself a break from Joseph Carver and his Church in the Wildwood.

All that being said, things may get a little quiet and dusty around this blog during the month of November. I will be BUSY! And if you invite me to do something in the real world, I'll probably say no. Don't take it personally - I'm just taking this thing seriously.

~ you can follow along with my NaNo project by visiting me here ~

it's going to be a long month but it's going to be worth it

The End