Abandoning The No-Plan Plan

I have been working on a new novel for a couple of months now, and I've been attempting to write it without an outline, without any idea of where the story or the characters go. The idea is to discover all of this as I go along. It's an experiment in creativity, wherein I attempt to mimic the techniques of our own Davin Malasarn in the hopes that I'll stumble across the sort of surprising narrative turns that he has in his stories.

I really really (really) am hating it. In fact, I hate it so much that whenever I think about working on the story I get angry. I have no idea what it is so I have no idea what to do with it. In the last week or so, I have managed to write one sentence and it's not a particularly good sentence, either. I look at my notebook and my stack of reference materials and I think about all the other books I could be writing instead, the books where I have outlines and knowledge of the plot and the purpose of the characters. The books that I would enjoy writing.

Because I really really (really) am not enjoying the work on this current project. Yes, some of the bits are the best passages I've written, but I put that down to my having grown as a writer, not to my having no idea what I'm doing on the page. I don't see myself ever getting a finished novel-length draft out of this book, not writing it the way I am. There is nothing compelling me to move forward with the writing because I'm not going anywhere. I am not one of those people who can just go on a wander to see what I'll see; when I go for a walk, I like to know what the destination is and how long the walk will take and where I'll have a pint at the end of the walk. This wandering around through my manuscript is making me terribly nervy and that nervy quality is finding its way onto the page and I don't like that, either.

To make a long story short, I have decided that my plan to write this one without a plan is a bad sort of planless plan. I throw up my hands. I throw in the towel. I throw off the shackles of this prisonless prison, et cetera. Today I'm going to figure out what the hell the story is and what happens when my two main characters meet and how the book ends and why all of it takes place. So there. Otherwise I'm going to throw what I have of this book into the fireplace. Grrr. Argh.

Also, Happy New Year!

Friday Filler! Margaret Atwood and Endings!

This article by Margaret Atwood is amazing and useful and true. It makes me laugh because someone recently told me she objected to one of my books because the ending seemed tragic for its own sake. Discuss.

Also, yesterday Michelle's latest novel, MONARCH was finally officially published! Have you bought a copy yet? Why the hell not?

On Endings

Yesterday afternoon I finished the first draft of my work-in-progress. I've been working on the last chapter for about a week, and on the final scene in the book for a couple of days. I admit that I always get nervous and twitchy when writing the last scene. It's the last real opportunity, after all, to panic about the book while drafting it. All that self-doubt I've repressed during the previous six months or whatever comes to a head and I am convinced that not only is the ending I'm writing a weak ending, but the book as a whole is the worst book ever written in the history of written books. You know the drill, I'm sure. But once I get that last word down and put down the pen, I can be a little more objective about the book and the ending.

When I write the endings of my novels, I usually do so with a specific image in mind, something I've kept hold of and written toward for most of the narrative. Sometimes I'm not at all sure how to actually get to that image so the final chapter becomes a kind of battle between where the prose seems to want to go and where I want the prose to go. It's like trying to sculpt a mountain out of a river, maybe. I feel like I'm negotiating with my narrative more than I'm just putting it down on paper. But still, there's that image I want to leave the reader with.

One thing that hadn't really occurred to me until just now is that my books all end with the protagonist in motion, moving into the future. Sometimes that future is really bleak but more often, I think, it's simply a great unknown future that's--if nothing else--sure to be different from the past. None of that sort of character arc stuff has been deliberate and now that I see it I'm not sure how I feel about it. But it's there. Which is fine, because I have consciously tried in my last chapters to do certain things:

1. Avoid summing up. I hate summations, or grand statements of theme.
2. Avoid tying up plot threads. I am bored by denouements that tell you how every character in the book's life will turn out beyond the last pages of the book. (I shake my fist at you, Mr. Tolkien and your Scouring of the Shire!)
3. Avoid cliches and pats on the reader's head.
4. Avoid an ending the reader will expect.
5. Avoid a complete sense of closure.

Which is to say, I want to give my readers something other than the stereotypical ending of a book that wraps everything up in a tidy package and allows you to stop thinking about the story. Which means, in a way, that I try to make my endings surprising and disturbing. Not disturbing-in-a-give-you-nightmares sort of way, but I do want to leave readers in an unsettled state. Victoria Mixon wrote in a comment here a few years ago that she thought an ending should "kick you into space." I'm not exactly sure what Victoria meant, but I like the phrase. I think the reader should find herself in a new and unexpected place when the book is over. I don't know if the ending alone can do that, but if the book leads properly up to the ending, then I think you can kick the reader into space.

Another thing I notice (especially about the ending I just wrote) is that I might ask as many questions during my last pages as I answer. I try, I think, to open doors and introduce possibilities all the way through the narrative, right up to the last word. I'm not sure if people will find the ending of my most recent book particularly satisfying, which I'm trying not to worry about, because I don't think my intention was to satisfy so much. One of the conceits of this book is that you don't know who is telling the truth, including the detectives (it's a philosophical detective story, my book), and in the final chapters you have a lot of people lying to each other, calling each other liars, and I think that where the truth precisely is becomes difficult to pin down and I make no effort on behalf of the reader to lay out what's actually gone on. Some readers might not like that so much. We'll see.

Mostly, and I think this should be completely obvious to everyone, I write this post to brag about having finished the first draft of my latest novel. This is novel number five, and I hope it's a good one.

Anyway, a question because really I do want these answers: Have you/are you trying anything new or different with endings to novels? Are you turning away from traditional endings? Why or why not? Do you think the writer has an obligation to provide anything in particular to a reader in an ending?

Loose Endings

On Saturday evening, Mighty Reader and I saw a play: Cymbeline by William Shakespeare. It was a comedy, which means that it had not only the main dramatic arc but a half dozen other arcs going on. This is certainly an entertaining way to structure a play and it's also how Shakespeare managed to keep the beginnings and ends of his plays away from each other for three or four hours. The plots leapfrog past each other, faster and faster and more ridiculous and violent until the final scene where everything is resolved and all the mysteries and mistaken identities and misunderstandings are resolved.

And about that last scene.

What Shakespeare tends to do is gather together onstage every surviving character in the play and have these characters point at each other before witnesses and make accusations which are refuted; explanations flow nonstop for fifteen minutes or so while every character has one of those "But...I thought you...oh, I get it. Well done indeed. Kiss me, Kate and buy me a drink, Ernesto! All is forgiven!" moments.

About ten minutes from the end of one of these comedies (it doesn't really matter which*) I am always struck by the same realization: these last scenes really aren't necessary. Likely back in the 16th century, when people treated going to the theater as a more social event and drank, ate and chatted their way through the afternoon or evening, a big scene at the end that summarized all the subplots was needed because nobody had really been paying attention to the whole thing. Possibly people only really closely watched the first and fifth acts of these plays; I really don't know and that's not the point.

Here's the point, Mr. Shakespeare: Every character in your story doesn't need to know how everything works out for everybody as long as your reader knows. These final scenes are unnecessary and they slow down the action at the end because, frankly, we've all heard all of this explanation already. Sometimes twice already. So essentially the audience/reader is forced to sit through a summary of the action while all the characters get caught up.

I really hate these denouements, and what's worse is that they are not unique to Mr. Shakespeare's works. I have run across any number of novels that have anywhere from two to two-hundred pages of "wrapping up" and these final sections make me want to blind myself with a sharp object (I'm looking right at you, Mr. Tolkien with your "Scouring of the Shire" and other dull-as-death final chapters). Maybe this is purely a matter of taste, but I'm certain that a well-written ending without all the post-climax exposition would satisfy most readers. In my own books, I work my way to the climax and then I get out of the story as absolutely quickly as I possibly can. My opinion is that you do not have to explain what happens in any sort of detail, nor do you have to show all of the loose ends being tied up. What you need to do--all you need to do--is point the reader at the likely outcomes of the various dramatic arcs. Your readers are bright enough to figure the future histories of your characters out for themselves. Really they are.

*I except of course The Winter's Tale which ends with the stage direction "Exit, pursued by a bear."

Does your story have a hypothesis?

First off, if you missed Scott's last post, please check it out because it's a great one!

There has been a big hullaballoo in the science world because some researchers recently claimed to have found a bacterium that is able to substitute the phosphate in its DNA with arsenate. You don't really need to know those details, but suffice it to say a lot of people are skeptical. Another scientist wrote a blog post arguing the different reasons why the original research can't be trusted. She includes this great line, which I think applies to fiction writing (at least MY fiction writing):

"There's a difference between controls done to genuinely test your hypothesis and those done when you just want to show that your hypothesis is true."

For me, each story I write has some sort of "hypothesis" or at least a question that is unanswered when I start the story. My hypothesis for my novel Rooster, for example, was that the world could sympathize with a man who was seemingly unlikable. My hypothesis for Bread was that a man could reach such a low that self-sacrifice was the best solution for him.

I start out with a hypothesis, and the job I assign to myself is to test whether or not that hypothesis is true. To do that, I expand on my story, I let it progress in directions that feel natural or "real" to me.

I try not to force it.

But, sometimes, when I do force it--when I suddenly throw in a bad twist in the story or when I make my characters do things that are inconsistent with their personality--that's the point when I stop genuinely testing my hypothesis and start trying to show that my hypothesis is true. I see this sort of thing in a lot of mediocre books and movies, when there is some point in the story where I feel like the creator is suddenly just trying to get to the finish line. I sometimes use the word sincerity to describe this sort of thing. When a story is forced, it doesn't feel sincere to me. The writing suddenly become a manipulative device to try and show a hypothesis. I don't know if other writers feel this way, but it captures my thought process as I'm working through a story.

As I write these days, the biggest challenge I face is to keep from forcing my story, especially when I get near the end. I'd say I haven't succeeded in doing this yet. I need to keep genuinely testing my hypothesis instead of trying to show that my hypothesis is true.

Story is a matter of organization

A couple of days ago, I was responsible for teaching a lesson on "Genomic Approaches to Multifactorial Disease" to a class of college juniors. It was a topic that I knew very little about, considering my thesis was about arsenic contamination in Bangladesh.

As the cherry on top, none of my co-workers in lab really knew much about "Genomic Approaches to Multifactorial Disease" either--and they all happened to be very busy last week, so they probably couldn't have helped me even if they did--so I ended up giving a practice lesson to my friend T, who is a fellow writer, not a scientist.

So, there T and I are, practicing in my office, and I'm throwing out scientific terms and diagrams and methods of statistical analysis, when he raises his hand and says, "I think you should show and not tell."

It took me a second to understand where he was going with this, but then I figured it out.

See, I had been giving a general outline of genomic approaches to multifactorial diseases to him without getting to an actual example, like the study of high blood pressure, and he said that, for him, the example would make everything clearer.

The whole experience reminded me that almost every message we communicate to someone else can be organized in the form of a story...and techniques that we use to tell an exciting story can also be applied to any messages to make them more exciting.

When the time came for me to give my actual lesson, I organized each part of my lecture to come out like a story, setting up a question in the beginning, going through the thought process of how to solve that question, and then building to the climax where the question was answered. It made for an engaging discussion, and I had multiple students come up to me after the lecture to say how interesting my talk was.

This has all reminded me that the skills we learn as story tellers can be applied to so many things outside of our fiction writing. I think I seem to be a more interesting person in general because I've learned to share details about my life more in a story form. It's a matter of organization, setting things up so that there's a beginning, middle, and end. It's a nice tool to carry in our back pocket for anytime we need it.

And! It's December 6, just a few days before all of our Notes From Underground stories are due! I'm excited to see what we end up with. Already, we've gotten some great stories, and I can't wait to get them published and available for readers!

Unexpected and Inevitable

Scott's post Friday and my own revising this weekend had me thinking about story endings again. I was revising, Bread, and I had gotten to the last few pages. The two possible endings I arrived at were both fine in the sense that they were plausible and gave the story closure (and really, how hard is that when you're dealing with a cannibal?). But, neither of the two endings sat quite right with me.

I realized that the reason I didn't like either one of the endings very much was because they represented the two most obvious outcomes to my story. In my case, my main character was committing a crime, and it was either going to go well or it wasn't.

While chatting with Michelle, I was reminded of two Jhumpa Lahiri stories in her most recent collection Unaccustomed Earth: "Hell-Heaven" and "Only Goodness". What I loved about both of these stories was how they were ended. In reading these stories, I will say that I was fairly underwhelmed a good 98% of the way through. They were deftly written, and in general the characters and conflicts were engaging and emotional. But, what bothered me about them was that they felt boring.

Until the last line.

In both cases, Lahiri managed to catch me off guard with the final sentence. They are both unexpected and inevitable, meaning, they led me to a new conclusion I wouldn't have guessed at, even though all the clues were there.

I think a reader wants to be surprised without feeling cheated. An unexpected and inevitable ending accomplishes both of those goals. It gives them a journey that they can relate to, but then something catches them off guard and makes them see things in a new light (something I think all good art should do).

So, in going back to Bread I ran through my entire story and dared to avoid the two endings that came most naturally to me. Using the earlier material, I decided to come up with that I hadn't thought about before. I wanted to surprise myself. I wanted to learn something new.

I'm happy to report that I like my current ending. I like that it makes me revisit the story again and sort of go, "Huh."

What about you? How do you go about approaching your story endings?

Ending a Short Story: Some Thoughts

I will admit that I am not the most brilliant short story writer, but I've read a lot of them and I have made some observations about things that writers of good short stories never rarely do. So this is one of those proscriptive posts that annoy me so much but here I am, writing one anyway. Go figure. But here are the things I'd keep in mind were I working on a short story:

1. Never directly explain the action. People read partly for the pleasure of figuring things out for themselves. Don't deny them that pleasure. Which is to say, avoid things like Jimmy picked up the bundle and stormed away because he was angry. We can figure out that Jimmy was angry, really we can. If you write a sentence using the word "because," you might be well advised to just delete it.

2. Never sum up. Readers are bright. See above comment, but mostly I mean don't sum up the story for the reader at the ending. Don't tell your reader the meaning of your story. The "meaning" of the story might be different for the reader than it is for you. It's also highly likely that you don't know what your story actually "means" in a deep thematic sense while you're writing it (unless you are deliberately writing didactic or moralistic fiction, in which case your story probably really sucks will probably only appeal to a limited audience; I'm just saying).

3. Leave them wanting more. Go out on a high note. Don't drag the ending out. Have you finished the necessary action of the story? Then get the hell out of it. You can get to the moment of crisis, assure the reader what's going to happen next, and then stop without even showing the crisis resolving itself. That's a cool trick.

Also! I am not even here today! Through the magic of the internets, I wrote this post last week or so, and this lovely Friday morning I'm on vacation! I will not be looking at this blog until, say, next Tuesday, so have a good weekend in my absence, and I look to Domey and Michelle to keep the commentary cracking with humor. So get cracking.

Don't Rush to the Finish Line

As I approach the end of my current WIP's first draft, I can't help but feel as though I have been sprinting through the scenes toward the final page. Part of that is due to the whirl of character activity and the rush of events in the story itself (and--for those familiar with my work--all the killing going on). But part of it is just me, hurrying my way through the writing. Last night Mighty Reader told me that I was moving so quickly just so I'd be done with this first draft. I told her she was wrong, but of course she's right. I have been hurrying just for the sake of hurrying, or for the sake of my self-imposed end-of-September deadline. Hell, if I really tried, I could finish the book up in a couple of hours tonight. There aren't that many actual events left to narrate. The trouble is, it would be a crappy, rushed narrative.

I look at some of the scenes wrote this week and I realize that they were not much more than sketches of scenes. A final act that I thought would take 10,000 words to tell looked like it was going to be written in more like 4,000 words. That's not economy of style, but stinginess with the narrative elements. I felt less like a writer of careful prose than a guy running down the aisles at the supermarket, throwing ingredients into the cart and promising you a good meal at some point down the road. That's no way to write a novel. Or to feed a dinner guest.

During the last few Designated Writing Periods (that is, lunch breaks) I did not move forward with the story. What I did instead was go back into the last scenes I wrote and fleshed them out more, slowing them down and beefing them up, putting in things to ratchet up the tension and madness of the story. I've thought of a nice event (a handy bit of violence, as it happens) that will fit neatly into the end of one scene, an event that will boost the tension and conflict and will also manage to dramatize the change in one of my character's personalities. If I had not stopped to consider the idea that I'm moving too fast, that I am presenting only the bones of the story in an effort to simply Get To The Last Damned Page of the Novel as fast as I can, I would not have had any of the cool ideas I'm now working into the story. So it's all win, and maybe I would've fixed this sketchy finale in the revision stage, but maybe I wouldn't have and then my agent would be saying, "I liked it until the end, and then it got sort of suck, Mr. Bailey."

I long to print the final pages of this MS, place my hands on the stack of paper and say, "Done! Done! Bring me cigars and champagne!" But I want to be done writing, not just done typing. If you know what I mean. So is it just me, or do the rest of you run headlong through the endings of your first drafts as if you were escaping a house on fire?

Got stories? Share them! Talk about the final stages of a first draft, no matter what the experience is like. It will be educational for everyone, I promise.

Come, Sir. I Draw Toward An End With You

This weekend I finished the first draft of my current novel-in-progress (not so much "in progress" now, I guess), which meant that I had to write the ending of the book. I knew, more or less, what I wanted to happen at the very end of the story. I knew the ending before I wrote a word of Chapter One. But there is, of course, more to ending a novel than dramatizing the final plot point. Isn't there?

I wondered the whole time that I was writing my ending what the purpose of a novel's last chapter is. To finish the story, certainly. To say "what happened." To tie all the strands together into something satisfying for the reader, I guess. To close things off with an image that's appropriate and aesthetically pleasing, I suppose. Really, I'm not sure. I wrote my way from where I was at the end of Chapter 23 to the image and final paragraph I had for the close of the book. The path took some surprising turns that I didn't see coming but those turns please me, at least right now.

I tried to push away all those thoughts about purpose while I was writing my way to the end, but I wasn't entirely successful. There was one point when I was convinced that I had to have something Significant--something that summarizes or comments in some way upon the story--and I resisted that urge as much as I could, mostly just by avoiding my protagonist. The point of view of my final chapter circles around the protagonist, the story coming instead through some of the supporting cast; we only actually get inside the protagonist's head about a page before the end of the book, and when he finally thinks or speaks, I make him sort of inarticulate so as to deliberately not moralize or make him a proxy for my authorial commentary on the story.

Anyway, I think I've written a satisfactory ending. I think.

Naturally all of this makes me wonder about endings, especially the way endings are written in "modern" novels, whatever that means. Modern novels seem to have a certain expectation regarding endings, an expectation I've not really figured out. I've read a lot of 19th-century novels, where there is a tendency to have the author look back and reflect upon the events of the novel, to make some kind of a statement to/for the reader. There is also a tendency to have long denouements where we get a picture of the lives of all the characters after the story ends. I used to follow that model, but now I prefer a more abrupt ending, where you get the hell out of the story once the principal action is over. My favorite ending of any novel is that of Joyce's Ulysses, but my actual model for endings, I think, is Shakespearean tragedy:

Hamlet: Ouch! (dies)

Horatio: That's all folks! (waves at audience)

(curtain)


My latest book (like all my books) is a tragedy. Because things end unhappily in tragedies, some writers try to put some kind of positive spin on the action right at the end. Dickens gives characters heroic speeches sometimes (think of the end of A Tale of Two Cities); Hari Kunzru in Transmission goes fantasy and his protagonist may be happy, somewhere, after all; Junot Diaz in The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao keeps tacking ending upon ending after the tragic finale until we are finally presented with an absurd and (if you're me) annoying happy ending. William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor were brave enough never to go that route.

Anyway, I am wondering in my long-winded way if you kind folks have any thoughts about endings. What is the purpose of the last chapter of a novel? Does the author owe the reader anything (I understand that in some genres there are conventions governing endings)? How do you feel about authors who supply morals and the like?

The. End.

I'm very close to finishing the complete rewrite of my novel, Monarch. This means I'm halfway through the last chapter, which means I'm trying to write as slowly as possible. I want to wrap everything up. I want to create an ending that satisfies both me and my readers.

I recently met with a blogging friend to discuss her novel. She looked at me with a dejected expression, her shoulders falling. Not a lot of people "got" her book, she said. Not a lot of people understood why it ends the way it does. We later figured out why, and I'm convinced that if her book sells, she'll have a lot of controversy over that ending even though it's a perfectly valid and good ending. I haven't read the book, but I know I'll love it if I do.

The truth is, we all like different endings. You can't write an end that will please every single reader. You know that saying you can't please 100% of the people 100% of the time? So true.

Either way, I'm interested to see what most of our readers like! So take a minute to vote on the few questions below. Yes, there is chocolate.

What makes a story ending satisfactory for you?

If you thoroughly enjoyed a book, but the ending is unhappy, are you likely to read it again?

Do you have to eat chocolate to finish a novel?

Are you planning on entering our Genre Wars Contest? Mark "yes" if you have already

Question For The Day: Since I didn't ask enough questions already, let me know where you're at with the end of your current novel. Have you planned it? Are you writing it? Do you just wait until you get there to figure it all out?


~MDA (aka Glam)

Stop or Evolve

This weekend I spent 14 hours in a beginning memoir writing class and about 5 hours doing the homework assignment for it. The memoir form was very new to me, and surprisingly different from fiction writing, at least in my opinion.

One of the ideas that came up again and again throughout the class was the idea of reflection. We, as writers of our own stories, were asked to reflect on things that happened, rather than simply reporting on them. We were asked to describe the insight we gained through the experience. That's the supposed difference between memoir and autobiography, though often those two words are used to mean the same thing.

A woman mentioned that she had been working on her memoir for about 8 years prior to joining this class. She had written a couple hundred pages before she came to a stumbling block. She didn't know what to write next. Then, she said something that resonated, not only with the memoirist teaching the class, but also very much with me, a self-declared fiction writer. She said that as she was approaching the later part of her story, she realized that she either needed to stop writing, or she needed to evolve to make any sense of why her story was meaningful for her.

Stop or evolve.

What exactly does this mean?

Well, for the memoirist, it comes back to reflection. You know that the story you are writing is significant to you because of something. But, you might not know what that something is. To bring your story to a close, you either have to figure out that thing, or you have to admit that your story isn't ready to be completed yet. (That admission, might be totally okay, depending on where you are in your life.)

The same principle applied to me and my novel. Scott, Literary Lab co-author, read it awhile back, and he liked it...for the most part. Regarding the end, he said "it doesn't feel finished so much as sort of abandoned. I get the impression, actually, that there is something you are trying to imply but you aren't just coming out and saying, something important you won't tell me."

First off, I truly appreciate that Scott would be so honest with me. He is so honest a man. I'd had a dozen people read my book before him, and though I had sensed that something wasn't quite working for them, no one else had actually voiced the problem of the ending despite my annoying prodding. (Well, one person tried to, but he was being a bit too nice about it to break through my thick skull.) Scott, I hope you don't mind me quoting you and showing you for the critical monster you truly are.

But, the problem he saw, and the problem that this memoir class helped me to understand was that I had hit that point of having to stop or evolve. I had explored the life of my protagonist, a fictional representation of my father, and at the end that character needed to evolve if his story was going to reach closure. He could have evolved. The clues were there for him to get or not get--that's what I think Scott was experiencing when he sensed that I was trying to imply something. But, I hadn't actually taken my protagonist to that point of change. He was right up against it, and then he miraculously transported to the other side by the helpful hand of this tired author.

I had been fixing that as I was revising my book. (Thank you, Scott.) And, the classmate's simple phrase was the best way I have heard of that articulates this problem. I feel closer to an end of my book now. I've made some changes that required a tougher examination of my story and the people in it...and of myself.

So, stop or evolve. This is, for me, the first formalization of how to end a story that I've found to be useful.

Questions: Given that so many of you are genre writers, does this idea of investigating insight and having your characters evolve come into play? Does this evolution come up in every story? Should it?

Immanence versus Transcendence

The debate between immanence and transcendence has religious origins. An immanent view of God asserted that He was present all around us, while a transcendent view placed God above us. This debate has since seeped into the literary world, sometimes called presence versus transcendence, and discussed by critics such as Marjorie Perloff, among others.

The literary aspects of this debate concern whether or not a piece of writing should strive to reach divinity (defined in the most secular way possible!) by stretching for transcendence as it approaches the end. Should a story try to have universal themes and symbols? Should a writer consciously attempt to provide worldly insight in their stories?

Maybe not. An immanent or present view would say that by simply writing down the facts of the story and presenting them in a straight forward way, a writer is able to create the divine because the divine is present in all things. Furthermore, it may actually be less insightful to try to make the writing mean more than it does, because any attempt to explain the divine must automatically diminish it.

I've been thinking a lot about this topic lately, since my good friend and poet, Craig Cotter, keeps telling me to stop trying to have that big bang at the end of my stories. He tells me to simply let the story go where it is meant to go without my asserting additional (false) meaning to it.

I experiment with this idea, and I do think it is an interesting one. But it's hard to let go of the idea of having the grand finale.

Note: Tara Maya also has a post on endings today.