On the Hunt for "The End"

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane

Once more I am searching for the end of a story. Once more it seems to be hiding from me behind a crazy mixture of words that don’t seem to be paving the pathway I need to glide on toward “the end.” Once more I’m feeling the way I did back in 2009 when I wrote this:

It's been a hard work week so far with too many other things I have to do getting in the way of my five pages a day quota to make sure I meet my summer deadline. I've been writing and maybe almost getting my pages, but at the end of the day I sometimes end up thinking that I'm going to have to cut most of those words in the final draft. But I tell myself to just get the words out there where I can cut them or improve them, where I can tell the story I'm trying to tell. In the best way I can.

That’s one of the good things about keeping a writing journal. You can see you’ve been in the same place before. You can see that it wasn’t fatal. The story did get written. You can see that it even got published and people read it. Maybe not as many people as you might hope. Most all writers wouldn’t mind an appearance on the New York Times Bestseller list, but any reader’s list is good too.

I’m not sure which book I was writing in 2009. Maybe The Seeker or The Blessed. I’m almost sure it must have been one of my Shaker books. That’s what I’m searching for the end of once again. A Shaker book. I’m anxious to be at the end. I tremble a bit thinking about reading it over once I find those elusive words for fear I have not written the story I hoped to write when I first typed in the words “Chapter 1” and began.

The post back in 2009 was titled “Making the Words Disappear.” You can click on this link if you want to read the rest of what I wrote then. That is what a writer needs to do - make the words disappear. A writer wants readers to be living the story with the characters and not simply reading about them. Some years ago I was teaching a community ed class on writing and one of the sessions was how to make characters come to life. In the process of searching for something that might keep my wannabe writers interested in this very uneducated in writing processes teacher I searched for inspiring advice from other writers who were more educated in the writing process. One of the things I read that I have never forgotten was a writer saying she wanted to create characters who would crawl up into a reader’s heart and find a home there. That’s what I want to do. That’s what I’m trying to do with this book as I push my people out on the paths that will help me find an end of the story that will satisfy them and me and you, the reader.

Do the words disappear for you when you’re reading? 

Have you met characters that you invited into your heart and that you remembered long after you came to the end?

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

And So We Look for the End

I'm still searching for those elusive words "the end" with my deadline zooming toward me. Well, actually my original deadline is seven days gone, but where one deadline is missed, another takes its place soon after. So since most of my words need to be on the trail of those two sneaky little words that keep hiding from me, I went back in time here on One Writer's Journal and pulled out a post from long ago about looking up some "end" quotes to inspire me in a previous hunt for the end of a story. Here it is with a few updating tweaks. 

When I went out hunting quotes about "the end," what I found wasn't exactly what I had in mind. This first one from Oscar Wilde must be talking about romance, but we can twist it around a little to make it fit writers. "When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve." 

When that story that has a writer totally in its grip ends, the weak writer might cry as she has to let her story go out to perhaps face rejections. Ah, but the efficient one will find a new story to take off with, and the wise writer will already be thinking up that new idea before she writes "The End."

And I always enjoy Mark Twain's wisdom. His quotes generally have that germ of truth that really gets his point across. "Man was made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired."

Here's another good one for writers. "If you want to know the end, look at the beginning." ...African Proverb

We need to have the thread of our story from the beginning to the end. I'm not one of those writers who knows the ending at the beginning, but I do hope that my endings fit my beginnings.

 
Ralph Waldo Emerson's advice here can certainly apply to writers. "To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom."  

So write the books you love. Enjoy the writing journey. Finish your moments and live your hours in your stories and in your life.

How about this last one? "To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow, the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture." ...Pablo Picasso

What do you think about it? Does this just fit for an artist? One thing sure just because I write the end doesn't mean I'm finished with this story. I need about two months to go back over it and make it better. But right now I'd settle for two weeks to at least begin to polish the story even though I know it will need more polish than I can apply in that short time. 

Writing a book is a long process from the day I type "Chapter 1" to the day - it has to be tomorrow - I write "the end." In between the two, I've come up with over 100,000 words. But the important thing is - have I written the story and let my characters come to life and find the perfect ending? The story is one more return to Rosey Corner for Love Comes Home.

Thanks for reading. Especially those of you who have been reading Small Town Girl. Remember, one more week to enter my Small Town Girl giveaway. Drawing next Sunday.

Book after Book

"But how do you come up with enough to make a book - book after book?"

Once more I've written those two very important words "the end." And of course, I had to shout about it on Facebook. That's what Facebook friends are for, to help you celebrate the ups and send you {{{hugs}}} during the down times. So naturally I shared with my FB friends that I had found those words for the who-knows-how-many time. I've published over twenty books, but I've written way more than that. Some that will never be published. Some that might have a chance of ending up in front of a reader some day. 

This story that I finally found the end on has a very good chance of being published. First, I have to clean it up, tighten the words, make sure it's at least halfway okay in the next week or so before I show it to anyone. Editing waits in the wings. 

But one of my FB friends asked me the question above. How do you come up with enough for book after book? A very good question and a daunting one when you are a writer - whether you're a beginner or an old hand at writing. A book is a lot of words. Words that have to tell a new story each time. There are only 26 letters in the alphabet but they go together in amazing ways. I'm sure someone out there knows how many words there are in a dictionary. I don't. I just know it's a lot and that those words can be put together in endless ways by writers as they think up new stories, hunt fresh ways to describe things, create new people with different characteristics. 

How do we do it? I suppose the simple answer is one letter or word at a time. And there's truth to that. But the answer my reader was seeking is more complicated than that. So complicated that it will take a smarter person than me to answer it. Boy, that was a cop-out, wasn't it? 


So okay, although I can't answer for the great mass of writers out there arranging and re-arranging those letters and words into stories, maybe I can answer for me. Each new book grows in my imagination, little by little. Each one starts with an idea. A lot of time a what if question. Sometimes it starts with a character. Sometimes an event or place and the characters spring from that. I don't wait for the story to be fully formed in my imagination. I let the characters grow and the plot develop as I go. And somehow the words keep spilling out, sentence by sentence, until I do have enough of them strung together for book after book.


The first book I wrote was the hardest and the easiest. The hardest because I'd never done it before. I didn't know if I could even find that many words to tell a coherent story. It was also the easiest because I'd never done it before. Every description I came up with was fresh and new. Now I have to try not to echo my other books and find new and different ways to tell a lot of the same sorts of things. That can make book after book challenging. But it is good when I get to those two words that never change from one book to the next. The End.


If you're a writer, what do you think is the most challenging thing about writing book after book or story after story? And if you're a reader, what do you think would be the most challenging if you did try to write a story? 


Thanks for reading. And I know. I let Wednesday slip past me again. The out-of-state grandkids spent the night here Monday, and I knew it would make me forget what day it was the rest of the week. Top that with Bible School and Mom having some rough mornings and no wonder I don't know where I am or what I'm doing sometimes. I am hoping I knew what I was doing when I wrote the end. That remains to be seen when I do my first read through.

Off into the Sunset - Finally

The End. Finis. Th-th-that's all, folks. Over and done. That's all she wrote, dear John. Enough's enough. Cut, print. That's a take. Finished. Complete. Ended. Riding off into the sunset. The fat lady's singing because it's over. The credit's are running. Close the book on that one. And so we have come to the end of the story.

Guess you've figured out I finally got my characters to ride off into the sunset so I could write those two magic words for my book, The Seeker. The End. I'd been looking for them for about two weeks now. And I finally found them. So I'm doing my happy dance or would be if I hadn't caught a cold from one of my grandbabies when they were here last weekend. But loving on them was worth a few sneezes.

And cold or no cold, I found the end of my story. Even better, I've read through it and it read okay. A few minor problems here and there, but nothing major. It was the story I wanted to tell and the thread stayed true all the way through. Now after a bit more spit and polish I'll have to sit back and see what my editor thinks and then if she likes it, then I'll have to wait a lot longer to see what my readers think. I liked the romance in it. And the historical part came through better than I thought it was going to.

So I'm excited this week. I'm even going to meet my deadline instead of having to beg for mercy. At least I think I am. Maybe I shouldn't get too carried away. I haven't actually printed off the book yet and sent it to anybody yet. Something could happen to delay me, but I'm hoping not. And you can believe I'm saying some thank you prayers because that ride off into the sunset had been hard to find. Actually there wasn't a sun or a ride, but there was an end.

I'm also getting excited about The Believer being out there for readers in about six weeks now. I usually have a book launch at Corinth Christian Bookstore in Frankfort, but this year they're doing something extra special for me. They're sponsoring a Brunch for me at Shaker Village in Mercer County on Saturday, July 25th at 10 a.m. They will be selling tickets at their store for $15.00 which will cover the traditional Shaker breakfast. Listening to me talk will be absolutely free. What a deal! ;-) Space is limited so if you're interested, you need to call Corinth. I'll put the info on how to contact them for tickets on my web page schedule in the next few days. I really appreciate, Steve and Bonnie and Mickey for all their support. They have a great store, one of those places you can go in and you just know you're going to have a good, peaceful shopping experience where everything is beautiful and even better can be used to spread the good news of the Lord.

Hope all of your have a lot of reasons to do your happy dances this week. Talk to you Sunday.