Reaching 'The End'

[Paul Whybrow]

I'm nearing the point where I type 'The End' to close my second novel. I experienced strangely uncomfortable feelings with the first novel, though that was partly because the conclusion of my complex psychological thriller had more frayed ends than a sofa mauled by a grizzly bear; I wrote a postscript of 3,000 words that tidied things.

This time around, the story has come to more of a natural conclusion, though I scattered enough red herrings in the tale to use as material for more novels in my series about a Cornish detective.

All the same, I'm experiencing a mix of emotions, which include happiness, doubt and an odd sense of mourning that another project is finished. I don't feel absolutely bereft, as I have loads of ideas for the third story which I'm eager to write. It feels a bit like jumping from one lifeboat to another on an empty ocean, where publishers sail past on their luxury yachts!

Do any of my fellow Colony members have unusual feelings when they reach 'The End'?

 

[James Marinero]

Do any of my fellow Colony members have unusual feelings when they reach 'The End'?

Yes, the feeling that it could be better - and that's certainly where I am right now.

 

[echo.]

I usually start off with this sense of smug satisfaction, which quickly wanes into a lost sort of what do I do now? feeling. Better watch Youtube for five hours. And then five days later, having run out of videos, teabags, and clean socks I am forced to discover a new project, largely in the interests of hygiene.

 

[KG Christopher]

I finished my WIP over two weeks ago now, and I have just been pottering around, digging up plants, reading the news, going for walks, applying for jobs, not really doing anything writing related. I am working on a website, thinking 'when I put my manuscript in front of an agent, they will want to know who I am'. I know I will have to start re-reading and editing before I send out a query letter, but first I think I'll go for another walk.

 

[Matnov]

Surely the answer is that you type 'The End', make a cup of tea then sit down again and type your metaphorical, 'Once upon a time' for the next one?



I wish I had an answer. As perhaps the only person on here who had never had the slightest intention or desire of going down the conventional publishing route ( I find the entire industry too ludicrous to even waste a second on) , for me it is a case of putting them out on Amazon only to be told that whilst the story is good, it really needs more tidying up (which they do), taking it down and going through the entire bloody thing, once again.

I suppose, in a way, a novel is never truly finished and that there is not a single author who would never go back and change at least something but I suspect that it is much like anything else worth having in life in that you have to be willing to let it go at some stage.

Currently have two novels ready to launch (one a re-issue, the other a new one) and am letting them stew for a bit before I put them out there. But even during the last read-through's both had things in them that I could have altered or re-written but sometimes they are just what they are.

Every work of art is ultimately a compromise in one way or the other. Trick seems to be learning to live with that.

 

[James Marinero]

Another approach (re another thread) is to write the final para of your next book...

 

[Madeleine Conway]

With the most recent one, I couldn't believe I'd reached the end. I had a vague plan in my head, and I kept putting things in that I knew needed to be there, and all of a sudden, I'd worked through the list of events and responses and had nowhere else to go. It really threw me. It was a very dramatic climax/denouement with a good set-up for the next book in the series, so when I re-read and proofed, I was pleasantly surprised, but it did just suddenly emerge almost without my realising. I'd been writing at a steady 800-1200 words a day since Feb, and then all of a sudden, I had a day where I wrote over 5000 words and as I typed a final paragraph, there was a lightbulb moment: "I'm done".