Famous Last Words
Most novelists find that starting a book is easy. It's finishing it that can be a challenge. When Ernest Hemmingway was asked why he wrote the ending to For Whom the Bell Tolls thirty-nine times, he replied, "Couldn't get the words right."
Some writers enjoy playing with their endings. Richard Brautigan, whose comic genius and countercultural vision of American life made him a literary idol of the 1960s and early 1970s, once told a friend he had always wanted to end a book with the word "mayonnaise." And he did! The now-classic, international best-seller, Trout Fishing In America (1967)
But all writers agree that the ending of the book is just as important, if not more so, as the beginning. Mickey Spillane, the great crime fiction writer, once said, "Your opening paragraph sells the book. The final paragraph sells your next book."
Some endings can even spark a debate that lasts for centuries. To this day, no one can agree on what Voltaire really meant when he ended his allegorical novella Candide (1759) with: "It is necessary to cultivate your garden."
For me, the endings of my books are like lighthouse beacons, guiding me to shore. A writer friend told me she rarely knows how her books are going to end until she gets there. I, on the other hand, need to know where I am going, which is why, for most of my books, I write the ending first. Even today, as I work on my latest novel, Black Opal, I have the final paragraph taped to my computer monitor. I am tempted to reveal it here in this blog, but that would be giving away the ending, and no writer likes to do that.
But I can promise you one thing: Black Opal doesn't end with the word "mayonnaise."
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