The Best Thing About Writing

Last night I put the finishing touches on my 2nd novel this year (first draft that is). After writing two novels and several flash fiction stories this year, I feel like I’ve discovered the stage of writing that hits me the truest.

Of course,  it’s the ending.

I know, I know there are writers/critics who say writers are full of shit when they talk about how a story finds its legs and starts to walk on its own–I understand that. But anyone that’s ever said that has never written the ending to a novel. Yes, I’ve felt this way about some short fiction that I’ve done in the past, but this hit me much harder when putting on the finishing touches of my first two novels.

Something came over me.

Both days, I wrote substantially more than I’d ever written before. This wasn’t because I was trying to hit some sort of imaginary deadline, but because the words flowed like never before. The two instances when my typing speed couldn’t keep up with the pictures in my imagination happened to be when finishing my two novels. It felt as if a snowball had rolled downhill for months, and it got to the point where I could stop it no longer. It went past the point where I usually say, “That’s it for the day.” In some deep area of my subconscious, I thought I had to finish right then and there.

I usually have a hard time seeing vivid pictures of what I’m writing about. But in the end everything is crystal clear. It’s amazing. I’ve never heard the dialogue clearer, nor seen the pictures clearer.

It becomes its own person, develops its own mind, and sweeps you away as the writer–much like you hope it will the reader. In the end you lose all control and have to let the cards fall where they may.