Craft Notes
How Do You Deal with Endings?
In an hour, a car service is coming to get me. It will bring to me to La Guardia, where I will wait two hours for my flight to arrive. On that flight, I will hopefully not be seated next to people who smell or who make smacking noises with their mouths, nor people who are feeling talkative. I will probably read and work on some stuff for school. Mostly what I will do, probably, is I will listen to Ryan Adams–it has to be music completely disconnected from any event–and stare forward, and wonder how it is possible that I have left the place where I, only so many hours prior, was.
For better or for worse–when it comes to the everyday, doubtless for worse–endings mean the most to me. Reading, writing, “relationships,” split-second goodbyes, drawn out goodbyes that never satisfy, leaving New York City after what amounts to a month here. While reading, I’ll cover up the last few sentences of a book–any book–with my hand until my eyes get there. I almost hold my breath. An ending is an opening, a deep and unmendable rending. While writing, I’ll ensure that the ending unravels, de-sutures, overturns what precedes it. I can control my endings on the page. I want them to spill the weight of the work into a neuter space or something.
Off the page, I am a masterful botcher of endings.
I lose all control, responsibility, openness. There is no sense of the ending–farewell, till next time or never–as an event which demands fidelity and, for whatever it’s worth, rationality, i.e. regarding an ending as crucial to any narrative. I lose myself. I forget, even, the thing that is ending.
But on the page, the ending is my favorite stroke. An opportunity to defy, upset, topple–a memento mori, an incessant dying. What does the ending mean to you? How do you approach it?
Off the page, my ending is a violence that closes, paralyzes–a silencing. It is a death.
I have to finish packing now.
Tags: depressive, emo, endings
I do the thing with covering up the last lines of the book also.
I do the thing with covering up the last lines of the book also.
I really love Ryan Adams. He makes me feel tranquil because he’s occasionally almost ambiguous as REM, but never even a little bit nonsensical.
I always think of endings first, and write stories to get to them. All the long things I have written have been very centered on the endings.
I try to do something kind of similar with endings in my actual life. I try to make rituals of it, so they will be pretty like endings in fiction. It works pretty well when they come naturally, but it gets exhausting when I try to predict them. Best just to let them come, I think, and be unafraid of internal dramas when they do.
I really love Ryan Adams. He makes me feel tranquil because he’s occasionally almost ambiguous as REM, but never even a little bit nonsensical.
I always think of endings first, and write stories to get to them. All the long things I have written have been very centered on the endings.
I try to do something kind of similar with endings in my actual life. I try to make rituals of it, so they will be pretty like endings in fiction. It works pretty well when they come naturally, but it gets exhausting when I try to predict them. Best just to let them come, I think, and be unafraid of internal dramas when they do.
I am chronically bad at endings. I am the most happy when I am able to slip out a door while everyone else is distracted when it’s time to leave a social setting. I’d prefer if things didn’t end.
When I read.
I am chronically bad at endings. I am the most happy when I am able to slip out a door while everyone else is distracted when it’s time to leave a social setting. I’d prefer if things didn’t end.
When I read.
Interesting to think of fiction overall as a kind of project of achieving endings.
Interesting to think of fiction overall as a kind of project of achieving endings.
I like George Saunders’ advice: “Ending is stopping without sucking.” It sounded flip at first, and sounds less flip, about writing and about life, every time I go back to it.
I like George Saunders’ advice: “Ending is stopping without sucking.” It sounded flip at first, and sounds less flip, about writing and about life, every time I go back to it.
same here
though i have met people who say that’s the first place they look sometimes. the first line and the last. i don’t understand those people. i do not think they possess romance in their souls.
same here
though i have met people who say that’s the first place they look sometimes. the first line and the last. i don’t understand those people. i do not think they possess romance in their souls.
i’ve never broken up with anyone.
i’d rather leave quietly than say good-bye.
i slap a period at the end of something & call it an ending.
i’ve never broken up with anyone.
i’d rather leave quietly than say good-bye.
i slap a period at the end of something & call it an ending.
god yes. if i could have a dollar for every time i’ve done that, just slipped out.
i am terrible at endings. and these days can’t seem to reach one without an apocalypse.
god yes. if i could have a dollar for every time i’ve done that, just slipped out.
i am terrible at endings. and these days can’t seem to reach one without an apocalypse.
I was coming to the end of a book today and found myself wishing that there were several more pages full of ‘lorem ipsum’ etc. so that I didn’t even know the end was coming. I cover the last few paragraphs as well, but I feel the anxious anticipation of knowing that an ending is coming still will convolute the experience of reading the end.
I was coming to the end of a book today and found myself wishing that there were several more pages full of ‘lorem ipsum’ etc. so that I didn’t even know the end was coming. I cover the last few paragraphs as well, but I feel the anxious anticipation of knowing that an ending is coming still will convolute the experience of reading the end.
i don’t know i try and write every sentence like it’s the last one until i can’t any more and then i put it away for a bit and see if it was the last and cut a lot and then just keep repeating that until it feels done maybe.
i don’t know i try and write every sentence like it’s the last one until i can’t any more and then i put it away for a bit and see if it was the last and cut a lot and then just keep repeating that until it feels done maybe.
Good thing you’re trying to deal with endings, kiddo, but don’t worry too much about it. The one to your literary career should be here in, oh, about three minutes.
Good thing you’re trying to deal with endings, kiddo, but don’t worry too much about it. The one to your literary career should be here in, oh, about three minutes.
Hey Alec!
It’s the anticipation of an ending thats drives me nutts.
But its arrival feels like nothing at all, or maybe a little lonely. I realize I am not anything that has happened or will happen, and I’m here whether or not you are.
I got two ferrets to help me cope with this fear and isolation. They are going to live for nine years. School’s ending, relationships are ending, but with my ferrets, there’s no ending to worry about yet. So i don’t feel total loss.
Glad I’ll see you soon.
Hey Alec!
It’s the anticipation of an ending thats drives me nutts.
But its arrival feels like nothing at all, or maybe a little lonely. I realize I am not anything that has happened or will happen, and I’m here whether or not you are.
I got two ferrets to help me cope with this fear and isolation. They are going to live for nine years. School’s ending, relationships are ending, but with my ferrets, there’s no ending to worry about yet. So i don’t feel total loss.
Glad I’ll see you soon.