So in a moment of inspired genius I finally—finally—had the real ending for the novella-that-won’t-end pop into my head tonight. It works. I mean, really, really works. It works as if that’s what I intended all along and just couldn’t recognize it.
But I’m bummed. Because I spent all day working to get the ending I have further along and it was good writing. I was enjoying myself and it felt good. I mean, the ending wasn’t working, but it felt good to be writing it.
For the “real” ending, I need to delete all that plus some. About 3,400+ words to dash against the cliff that is my delete key.
I can’t decide if I should try to salvage some of what I wrote or start completely fresh. Experience says that salvaging crap almost always takes longer than just starting over, even if it’s good crap. ;) But I really hate to lose some of those moments! They were good moments! But if I don’t get rid of them, I’m basically saying I have to write toward a certain goal, and that might not be right for this ending.
(Let me take a moment to say that when I say I got the ending, I don’t mean I actually have the moves worked out like a movie yet. I’ve discovered my ending, but it’s just this vague blob of impressions in my head at the moment. I actually have no idea what’s coming, other than that a character who wasn’t in this chapter is suddenly there, and that it changes everything, and I know it’s a good thing, and I can tell that it solves issues. I’m a discovery writer, through and through, and there’s still an awful lot of discovering to do. And this right here is probably why I average 500 words an hour. If I wrote any faster, I’d get lost in the fog that is my brain.)
And I can’t decide if I should just call it a night and deal with it tomorrow or keep going—maybe even try to finish it tonight. Because this new ending? I can tell it’s going to wrap up much quicker than the mess I have now, because it works, and I won’t have to use so much spackle to fill in all the damn holes.
Let me think…
A few seconds later…
I need to get going on it. If I don’t, tomorrow will just turn into a morass of hesitation and despair and then I’ll never get myself started. Procrastination will set in and I’ll be right back where I started this week. Not to mention that I might actually forget what I need to write.
Gah. I’m tired. I was planning to get to bed early tonight—like fifteen minutes from now early.
Guess it’ll be a long night after all.