In 10 days I will be done with my second novel-in-a-year project.
For a year, I have spent time with the characters of What He Left Me, and I have held Paulie in my arms, and I have fallen in love with Mr. Langley, and I have rooted for Aunt Bee.
It’s not easy to leave them to their own lives, when they have led me for so long in a story that unfolded much more beautifully than I could have known there at the beginning.
So all this week, knowing I have only four installments left with these people I have come to love, the grief has watched my fingers typing out their final words.
When we have spent so much time getting to know characters and their stories and we have begun to genuinely care about their lives and their futures, it’s not easy to let them go.
We have poured so much of ourselves into that project, spent a year of our lives sharing it with the world, and now it is finished.
Every project must come to an end.
And it’s not always easy, because sometimes we love them too much to let them go, and we want to know what happens and who they grow up to be, and we just don’t know if they’re ready to stand on their own.
We want to hold those stories close, like children, because it’s a mean world out there and they hold so much of us and what if the world doesn’t like them? What if the world rejects them? What if the world tears them apart more than they have already torn?
We finish these projects, and then we give them wings, trusting them to fly on their own.
We must let them fly.
Fear hides along the edges of grief, too.
Because sometimes we only have a dim outline of what comes next, and we’re not sure we’ll like those characters as much as we like these ones we must say goodbye to in 10 days, and who even knows if we can do it again?
We don’t have any guarantees. We just have a hard goodbye and a harder hello.
So here, in this goodbye place, I feel the questions pressing in. What’s next? What if it’s not any good? What if I choose the wrong next?
It’s easier just to hang on to that old story than to start a new one.
But every beginning has an ending, and this is just another.
Maybe we will miss our characters, and maybe we will miss that story they told, and maybe we will miss seeing them every day, but they are ready to stand on their own.
And we have to let them, because there is more to be done. More stories to be told.
We can’t pursue a project longer than it needs to be pursued, and we can’t tell more of a story than needs to be told, so we must trust our endings and embrace our beginnings.
So, in 10 days, I will say goodbye to Paulie and Charlie and Aunt Bee and Mr. Langley, and I will turn to the new ones who wait for a story to be told.
Because this is what it means to be a writer.
What projects are you finishing up, if any? What are your thoughts about endings? How do you find courage to embrace a new beginning?
Welcome to The Ink Well Creative Community.
The Ink Well Community is evolving. While this used to be a place where I posted a prompt for writers to share their creative works, I have been receiving several inquiries about my process, how I create and read and manage a household with half a dozen little ones. So I thought we could turn this into a community of people who share about the creative process in all its many facets, from where we find our inspiration to when we find time to create (especially if we work other jobs). I’ll be sharing struggles about my creative life and logistical information about my particular creative process and what I’m learning about creativity, among many other things. I hope you’ll weigh in with your own struggles and observations and lessons. Let’s start a conversation. Let’s encourage one another. Let’s live the creative life together.
And if you have your own questions about creativity or process or inspiration, feel free to visit my contact page and send me a note.
