The End

A high­ly suc­cess­ful writer once told me, “I don’t start writ­ing a sto­ry until I know the last sen­tence of the story.” 

It worked for her. I have nev­er ever been able to do that. Well, not quite nev­er: The one time I did was for the fourth book in the Crispin series. Except, while I had that last line, I nev­er wrote the book. 

(I still have the last line in my head.) 

No, my method is that I must dis­cov­er the last lines after I’ve worked on my book for many months. It’s not quite serendip­i­ty. In fact, I some­times refrain from fin­ish­ing the book for a while. At which point I work through the whole book (many times) with the hope—stress hope—that an end­ing emerges from what I have writ­ten. 

I’m remind­ed of this because that hap­pened with the nov­el I’m just fin­ish­ing. For a vari­ety of rea­sons, I did write an ending—many times. Noth­ing sat­is­fied me or my editor. 

What emerged at the last moment—last week—was curi­ous­ly embed­ded in the book right from the first page, and then echoed sev­er­al times in the course of the sto­ry. I hard­ly had noticed. But when I final­ly came upon a true end­ing, I could say, “of course.” 

And some­thing more. Only when I feel an emo­tion­al surge with­in me, a sense of completion—a phys­i­cal sense of “journey’s end”—do I know I have found what’s the right ending.

It comes, I think, from final­ly and ful­ly under­stand­ing the char­ac­ter I’ve cre­at­ed. It is almost as if the char­ac­ter is telling me where he/she is going/ending, as if I am observ­ing an objec­tive event. Such moments can—and have—brought tears to my eyes. When that hap­pens, I know I’ve got it right. That it usu­al­ly takes a year to get there only makes it more satisfying. 

By this time, you are yelling at me: “What is that end­ing?” Of course, I won’t tell you. You’ll have to read the book and make the jour­ney for your­self. If I’ve done my job right, you’ll feel what I felt.