Exploring the Space of the Ending (Part 2)

Reflecting on three more days of time spent in revision and refraction of the ephemeral ending I do have in pursuit of the feel of the ending I want

This post is a continuation from Part 1.

Returning to the desk to revisit the ongoing state of my manuscript’s ending two out of the last three days has returned positive results. Whereas the last few times I closed out the document for the day feeling like I was far from where I would like to be despite having exhausted the arc of the narrative, today I started feeling like the groundwork is mostly there, and that the shape of the ending I had hoped to discover is beginning to emerge and take hold.

On Wednesday, I came back to where I’d closed out by adding two paragraphs to where I’d left off before going on vacation, I added two more paragraphs after those, finding it much more fluid to expand from the previous day’s effort than after the longer absence, and feeling like I had at least the direction I needed to make the ending work, if not quite all of the right notes.

I spent less time rereading where I’d left off and more trying to springboard into the unexpected direction not quite having it all as fresh in my head after vacation had allowed me to be. More so than trying to get every line exactly right, I focused on making the ideas the narration exhibits kept furthering the story toward a conclusion that felt both substantial in tone and cliff-hanging in where it delivered the reader, which by the end of the day felt mostly intact, if not quite fully realized line by line.