The End (Almost)

It’s actually a bittersweet thing when you are really into writing a book. The day before yesterday a character I really love died. It’s just heartbreaking. Yes, I knew she was going to die. I even knew exactly when and how. She had a rich, full life. Doesn’t matter. I was sad anyway. Yesterday, two women who have been really foundering throughout the book started rebuilding their lives on more solid foundations, and I am proud of them, but I’ll miss them. I won’t get to share in the bright futures they have set for themselves. The reader will have to carry them through in their own imaginations.

This has been a real learning process. I started this as the one book I would write without planning, purely by the seat of my pants. It ended up being the most carefully planned book I have written to date. It’s like riding in an airplane—that exhilarating lift and swoosh! when you take off, but after a while, it’s time to settle into the flight plan and get the journey taken care of. There are surprises along the way, a bit of turbulence, breathtaking sun-soaked clouds, farmland, cities, but an airplane can’t linger too long. There’s another rush as you land, the excitement of a journey completed and new ones to begin…

But you can never recreate the same plane trip—that cloud, that thunderstorm. Books are different. I can go back, I can share, I can cringe at the mistakes (drat!). I love the written word!