Getting to the End (Patreon)

Today we are going to talk about endings.

No, not endings as in how you actually construct a story and make it end in a satisfactory way, there’s enough advice for that online and at least half of it is bullshit. No, what we are going to talk about is how getting to the end of a story can make you feel.

As always, these are just my own personal musings, but there are not that many people out there talking about how working through a long project takes an emotional toll, you know?

Many people know the thrill of starting something, that breathtaking romance with your own idea before it runs headlong into the gray slog of actually putting it on paper. 

A lot of people know about the tough middle, where it’s just grey slog and hard work, and where most projects get stranded and abandoned for various reasons. But say you get past that, say that the ending is in sight…

For me, that’s the hardest bit.

That’s when the doubts come…

To get through the slog, I always tell myself to edit later. Rewrite later. Fix things once the ending is done, but now that the ending is fast approaching? 

Shit. That’s terrifying.

It’s waking up at 4 am, moving from couch to bed, and catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Is that really the state of your story? All the ugly and disjointed bits, hazy and indistinct? How are you going to make that into a presentable whole once the alarm goes off in the morning?

It’s telling a funny story while drunk, not being able to tell if the crowd that surrounds you is listening in rapt attention or annoyed horror, and feeling your tongue start to falter.

It’s second-guessing all of your ideas at once, because the payoffs need to be there, but are they? Are they really?

And above all, everything feels so boring and trite.

At this point, it’s a project you’ve lived with for months, probably years, and it’s lost all its luster. All the cool ideas you had when you started, now sounds dull and bland because you’ve turned them over and over in your hands until the shine wore off. It’s like glasses you’ve kept touching, grimy and dull but if you take them off you can’t see anything.

At this point, your ending sucks. So your book/game/comic/art sucks. You’re so tired you don’t want to see it ever again. You just want it done so you can start that fresh romance with a new project.

You ever play a game/read a book that’s fine, and then in the last chapter everything happens so fast it’s over before you know what happened? It’s probably at least partly due to this. Approaching the end, the writer probably realized that they had two choices: Add more content/time/energy that they don’t have or stick to the plan and just get to the end as originally plotted. 

At that point, it is REALLY hard as a writer to know whether your lackluster feelings about the finale is because it truly is lackluster, or whether you’re just so tired of it that you can’t see the shine.

In a perfect world, they say that you should leave your manuscript alone for a few months before you start editing for these reasons, but we’re living in the real world, and we all need money. There might just not be time to do that, there are deadlines. 

And so, all we can do is to try to work through these complicated feelings. Which is why I am writing this post. 

There’s a sense of grief that comes with wrapping up a story that I think we need to acknowledge. A fear that it won’t be enough. That you’ve made a mistake along the way that’s too hard to fix now. This is where a good editor comes in with fresh eyes to tell you what they think, but hey, we’re all broke and a professional editor is seldom an option.

All you have is yourself, and sometimes invested friends or fans.

It might not feel like it will be enough. But it will. You got this far so you will make it the rest of the way as well. Just be aware of the things I’ve talked about above. It’s not just you. No need for imposter syndrome. This is all of us. It’s hard finishing things.

We’re all afraid of endings.