In Search of The End, Crane Style

"It’s official. I now hate my book. Well, manuscript, it’s still far from being a ‘book’. I keep trying to stitch it together, get the ending ready for my Alpha reader. But I’m stuck in the middle of ICKville.

What to do, what to do?

1)      Suck it up and stick it out in ICKtown?

2)      Or shuffle this one to the side, along with the other two manuscripts similarly abandoned?

I’m better at the second. It is, after all, my Modus Operandi up until now.

Maybe this loathing to see projects to The End has nothing to do with the venture, and everything to do with my Relationship to Endings? And not being good at them, though I have much experience in that regard. But wait. AH-HA! As a reader I dislike, have always disliked, reaching “THE END”. Why?

Because, it signals the story is over and if it’s a good one, I don’t want it to be. Then, more times than not, it’s either anticlimactic, or leaves too much unsaid. For instance, am I the only one who dislikes the way the Lord of the Rings trilogy ended? Or Gone With The Wind (until someone else wrapped it up with Scarlett)? Or the Aragorn series? Every Romance in print? And don’t get me started on Animal Farm.

How often are Endings really and truly satisfying?

I'm pondering giving Peace Makers up for a short story. Or novella. Picking a currently-hot (to me) topic and writing free-style, no edits, for NaNoWriMo which rolls around again in less than two weeks. But something, anything to get back on the writing wagon."

*

I wrote this dissertation several days ago. Since then, one after another, signs have pointed me back to Peace Makers. The most significant glided past on an eight-foot expanse of wings, its rattling cry reaching me first. The pale gray envoy settled gracefully on a pine bough at the edge of my back yard, an enormous clearing that defines the outer limits of downtown.

I sat, head cocked to see beyond the bird feeder, and thunderstruck, welcomed a Great Blue Heron. Even by water, Corr’s visit would be momentous. But in town? One is forced to pay attention, especially one penning a trilogy involving Druids and druid magic. And Corr (druid for crane/heron) plays an integral part in Book Two.

So. Since Peace Makers it is, and I refuse to dwell in the Land of ICK, I’m creating an Option Three in which I overcome my Inner Glass Ceiling and soar with Crane and Eagle, Raven and Wren.

I go inside, ask questions, listen to answers, then write.

Write as if my life depended on The Ending.

~ Olivia J. Herrell