The joys (?) of “The End”.
Ahhh, The End. There’s nothing a writer loves more than scribbling those two, little, three letter words at the bottom of whatever manuscript they are working on. I finally finished the first draft of a novella I was working on, which meant I finally got to write “THE END”.
HOORAY!
*Balloons and streamers fall from the ceiling and some scantily-clad woman hands me a trophy*
Right?
No, not really… Actually, not at all.
Just because you’ve reached the end, doesn’t mean it’s done and ready to be submitted. (I wish that’s what it meant.)
What lies ahead of me now is editing, rewriting, having pre-readers slam me with their opinions and then editing and rewriting again…
DAMMIT!
Don’t get me wrong, it feels awesome to reach the end of the story after plugging away at my computer for what seems like forever, but I’m so not even close.
I keep thinking I should not write “The End” ’til the actual end. Maybe jot down “Partially Ended”, or “DRAFT FINISHED”…
Those seem like better choices to describe where I’m at in the story writing process.
All this is just me rambling about having finished a novella. Everyone was congratulating me and saying good work, which felt awesome, but the little voice inside me (the one that keeps my ego in check) kept reminding me of the fact I’m not even close to “THE END”.
Thanks for that little voice, you can’t let me enjoy anything can you…?
To the non-writer people who are reading this: Next time you read a book or short story, think of all the work that goes into getting the story from the author’s imagination into the book in your hands.
To the writer people who are reading this: Keep up the good work, and thanks for all the hard work you put into the books and stories I have read and will read.
End rant 😀
MDG
mandydegeit.wordpress.com 
To sound completely trite, “The end is just the beginning.” Ah but it’s always one helluva place to start! Congratz on the first draft. Take a breather, have a cold “soda” and start something new. Best of luck!
Thanks Thomas. I’ve got a few things on the go, the joys of being a writer is that we’re never really finished… 😀
I prefer to use ### at the end of my manuscripts. It just doesn’t feel right to put “The End” on anything. Even when the countless edits are done (and it seems I sometimes spend longer with edits then it took to write it), I still don’t like to put “the end”. It sounds so finite. My hope is that once it is done, it is published and once it is published it sells. I don’t ever want to see it end. 🙂