I like endings.
This is unfortunate, because they cause a great deal of trouble.
An ending gives a story direction.
It tells the writer where the road eventually leads, which can be comforting when the middle of the book has become a small independent country with its own laws and border control.
Knowing the ending can help.
It can also ruin everything.
The problem begins when the writer becomes impatient.
You know where the characters need to arrive.
So you help them.
A little.
A conversation becomes more convenient.
Someone discovers exactly the right information.
A train leaves at precisely the useful time.
A person who has spent three hundred pages making questionable decisions suddenly develops excellent judgement because the final chapter is approaching.
The ending begins pulling the story towards itself.
I distrust this.
Characters should not become more cooperative simply because the writer has made plans.
If anything, people seem to develop a remarkable ability to become difficult when plans are involved.
Stories should probably be allowed the same dignity.
I have occasionally reached a scene knowing exactly what must happen next.
Then a character says something inconvenient.
Not literally.
I am aware of how that sounds.
But the scene changes.
A question appears where an answer was supposed to be.
Someone refuses to leave.
The road I carefully planned becomes less interesting than the one beside it.
This creates a choice.
Protect the ending.
Or listen.
I used to think changing direction meant the original plan had failed.
Now I am less certain.
An ending imagined before the journey knows nothing about what happened on the way.
It has not met the people who appeared unexpectedly.
It has not heard the conversations that lasted longer than planned.
It has not seen the photograph on the wall.
Why should it have the final vote?
This does not mean I abandon endings whenever a scene becomes difficult.
That would be less writing and more surrender.
But I try not to confuse direction with obligation.
A destination can be useful.
So can discovering that you were travelling towards the wrong one.
Perhaps the best endings are not the ones a writer protects most carefully.
Perhaps they are the ones that survive everything the story learns before reaching them.
I still like knowing the ending.
I simply no longer trust it completely.
— D. Vaen