I bundled up all of the chapters of my book into a draft and sent it to my agent, because there was a chance that I accidentally wrote the ending.
I had been thinking about it a lot, since I had finished the last chapter. That I had written my way into a moment that surprised me, and that it had felt very complete. I even wrote my surprise into the text. And I knew there were some things that still needed to be said, but mainly they were plot points to be resolved. Emotionally speaking, this book felt complete. So maybe these plot points didn’t need to be explained after that last sentence. Was it possible they just needed to be somehow inserted earlier in the book?
I thought I knew how the book was going to end for a long time – with a young woman feeling free and escaping her past, on a rooftop in Brooklyn. But this week I was wondering if maybe all of my books end, in one way or another, on a rooftop in Brooklyn, at least metaphorically. Which is to say I have ended my books with a woman being in a new place, alone, with a wide-open view, and beginning to finally grab at what she wants in her life. There’s nothing wrong with ending a book like that. It’s inspirational and valid, and how I feel about my life so much of the time, that I am striving for that moment, even if I am not necessarily achieving it. And so many of us are writing the same story over and over again for eternity. Curses and blessings.
But what I wrote my way into though, this different ending, felt right, and new, and fresh, and different – for me, at least. And really terribly sad and emotional. If I were reading this book, I thought, I would want it to end right here. This was the point of it all. I had found the point. Everything else would be an epilogue. And epilogues are great – they’re deeply satisfying things. They wrap things up so nicely. But what if this time I just made the fucking point already?
So we’ll see how that goes.
(Related.)
+++
I interviewed Maile Meloy for emusic. She’s a real class-act.
+++
I’m reading tonight at KGB Bar at 7 PM.
