Searching for the Last Line before The End

I continue to search for those elusive words “the end” with my deadline zooming toward me. So, since most of my words need to be on the trail of those two sneaky little words that keep hiding from me, I went back in time here on One Writer’s Journal and pulled out a post from long ago about looking up some “ending” quotes to inspire me in a previous hunt for the end of my story. Here it is with a few updating tweaks.

For fun, I am sharing the almost last line in The Song of Sourwood Mountain before I wrote the end for that story. No story spoilers there except maybe to know it has a good ending for the characters, but if you’ve read any of my books you know that is going to happen anyway. But I liked this ending line. I hope I find one as good for my work in progress.  So on to my post about  hunting the end.

When I went out hunting quotes about the end, what I found wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. This first one from Oscar Wilde must be talking about romance, but we can twist it around a little to make it fit writers.

“When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve.” ~Oscar Wilde

When that story that has a writer totally in its grip ends, the weak writer might cry as she has to let her story go out to perhaps face rejections. Ah, but the efficient one will find a new story to take off with, and the wise writer will already be thinking up that new idea before she writes “The End.”

I always enjoy Mark Twain’s wisdom. His quotes generally have that germ of truth that really gets his point across.
“Man was made at the end of the week’s work, when God was tired.”

Here’s another good one for writers. “If you want to know the end, look at the beginning.” …African Proverb

We need to have the thread of our story from the beginning to the end. I’m not one of those writers who knows the ending at the beginning, but I do hope that my endings fit my beginnings.

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s advice here can certainly apply to writers. “To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.”

It’s good to write the books you love so you can enjoy the writing journey. At least most of it. Finish your moments and live your hours in your stories and in your life.

How about this last one? “To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow, the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.” …Pablo Picasso

What do you think about that quote? Does it just fit for an artist? One thing sure just because I write the end doesn’t mean I’m finished with this story. I need more time to go back over it and make it better. Maybe a few months, but right now I’ll settle for a couple of weeks (once I find the end) to at least begin to polish the story even though I know it will need more polish than I can apply in that short time.

Writing a book is a long process from the day I type Chapter 1 to the day – it has to be this week – I write the end. In between the two, I’ve come up with around 100,000 words. But the important thing is – have I written the story and let my characters come to life and find the perfect ending? That’s the reason I shared the last line, well, almost last line, in my upcoming release, The Song of Sourwood Mountain. 

Do you like that last line?

This story I’m trying to finish with a last line won’t get a final title until sometime next month. My working title is The Last Dance. I’ve been dancing all through the story and for me that has been interesting since I am not a dancer.

So hope you’ll forgive me reposting this from 2013 when I was chasing those elusive words “the end” for my book, Love Comes Home. And even then it was a repeat from 2009 with edits. And so here I am again chasing the end.

As soon as I find that end and do that polishing, I’ll be having one of those crazy Mystery Photo Games here as I celebrate the release of The Song of Sourwood Mountain on May 7th. I had thought I would be having a book signing here in Lawrenceburg the Saturday after that, but the store Tastefully Delicious is still working on repairs to the building and may not be open again by then. They had hoped to be open around now. We will reschedule the book signing once they are sure they can be open again.