Can one end anything? A chapter, a paragraph, a sentence even? Doesn't everything one has ever done go on living in spite of subsequent events?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The book doesn't end when you finish writing it.
That is what I define as a novel: something that has a beginning, a middle and an end, with characters and a plot that sustain interest from the first sentence to the last. But that is not what I do at all.
There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.
There's very few people - like Shakespeare - who, no matter what, were gonna do what they did. For the rest of us, there's a lot of events that have to happen in order for things to end up the way they are.
But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.
The challenge is always to find the good place to end the book. The rule I follow with myself is that every book should end where the next book would logically begin. I know that some readers wish that literally all of the threads would be neatly tied off and snipped, but life just doesn't work that way.
Everything comes to an end.
Everything has an end.
Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
You don't reach points in life at which everything is sorted out for us. I believe in endings that should suggest our stories always continue.