So here I am a week out of NaNoWriMo. It's always tempting to relax, congratulate myself on a job... done, and let my momentum die completely. In that spirit, I haven't written anything since my last, short post here. With wholly warranted embarrassment I realized yesterday that I'd forgotten that I had a novel waiting on the very cusp of completion.
Hengist and Undine has about a week's worth of work left in it. There's the climax and denouement to go over, and a major infodump to write more interestingly. Then it will be time to face the fact that there's no excuse not to send it out. That's a big deal. I'm realizing that I've gotten used to being an aspiring author. Yet I'm about to move on to being an unpublished author, and I'm not quite sure what to expect.
I can't stay where I am, though, or I'd be in danger of being embarrassed in front of the entire internet.
So in the last week of NaNoWriMo one (or I, at least) launches into a crash course in narrative efficiency. Specifically, with 10,000 words left to go, and realizing that I was nowhere near the end of my story. It seemed prudent to make myself a little chart with ten spaces, each representing 1,000 words, and space out my 15 or so remaining plot points between them. I think I did something like this in previous years, but not so systematically.
It worked quite well for the first 5,000 words. That involved wrapping up one plot thread, so I could launch into the end. The problem came when I finished that and launched into the climax--only I wasn't actually at the climax. I had gotten my protagonist into a climactic problem (note to me: "climatic" refers to climate; "climactic" refers to climaxes) but hadn't done anything toward getting her out of it. And while 5,000 words is enough to wrap a story up, it wasn't enough to work out a solution and put the solution into action.
So how do you fix that? In my case, the ending just sort of happens. At the last word, everything is where it ought to be, I just might have glossed over how it got there. It wouldn't be the first time, or I the first writer, least of all in NaNoWriMo. Although it Hengist and Undine I learned that plot holes can be your friends. You can fill them with daring and clever solutions that you hadn't thought of in your first write-through. Can I say that? Is that bragging? If I tell you that I'm an awesome writer will you believe me?
Anyway, endings are hard when you're on a deadline. Everything else can spread its luxuriant tendrils across your story, and get ripe and vital and scintillating, and then suddenly there isn't room for a proper ending.
Hard or not, though, endings are important. I think for me, more than for other people, perhaps, an interesting story can really fall apart if the ending doesn't come together. I can be watching/reading/playing something that has me involved, and then... the end happens, and I realize that my interest was completely contingent on the ending. Sometimes the ending frays and the whole story loosens behind it at a result.
I feel like this has been happening more often in media lately. Has anyone else noticed this? It's tempting to rattle of a list of disappointments I've had recently, but I realized as I ran through candidates that I would give away how out of date my pop culture intake has been. Is anyone still talking about the end of Battlestar Galactica? But in that case in particular, I actually have a friend or two more behind the times than myself, for whose sake I'll skip the specific enumeration of offenses.
Suffice it to say that lately writers on deadlines have been dropping the ball on their endings. With the serialized stories you get in television, especially, I imagine it's tempting to keep raising the stakes, betting that you'll find a solution to your own plot by the time it rolls around. The challenge of getting renewed for next season is guaranteed, and the challenge of wrapping up your story is contingent on meeting that first one. Even so, I dare say that a satisfying ending isn't optional.
Now I'm reminded that not too long ago I was admitting to having trouble with my own ending. Eye, meet log.
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