I Just Wrote the Ending....

...Of this overarching story. Very strange.

I have a vast vision of the world I'm creating, and it won't fit into one book. Heck, I don't know how many books it will fill. For a start, three -- the particular characters I'm working with have a lot of work in front of them and it's going to take a while to create the world that their children will have to work with in the next part of the story.

So, I was sitting here playing around with some of the ideas and trying to expand some of the text about one of the people groups. I think it's good practice just to write random scenes from various places in the story every now and again, so that's what I did -- took a break from the structure of working within an existing story and hopped away to write the first thing that came to mind.

I thought that the first thing that came to mind was the end of the story. I was wrong. I wrote that, and then it came to me -- there was more -- not a lot more, but a wrap-up scene. I started writing it, and one of the characters revealed something to me I had not expected. But as soon as she said it, I realized, "oh yeah -- of course -- that all makes sense. That will definitely come up between now and then. And then this page will make sense."

I was thinking about J. K. Rowling and how she said for years that the last word of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" was "scar." It changed, but not much. I think it probably helped her have a target for where the story would end up. She had to end with Harry on Platform 9-3/4, seeing his kids off to Hogwarts, Ginny at his side, and his scar just a scar. Between the beginning and the end there were plenty of roads to take, and she had to find the right ones to get her to that scene.

So, for now, I have written most of book one, part of book two, and the last scene/line of book three. For now, I'm going on record as saying that the last word of my third book will be "beginning." Someday when I'm rich and famous (again, note the optimism) you can all come back to this blog post and say, "See, she said it right there -- 'beginning.'"

If it changes, you'll all be the first to know.