The End and Everything Afterwards: A Goodbye to Intern Emily

Summer is drawing to a close, and it’s time to wish our interns farewell as they move on to share their awesomeness with the rest of the world. Before heading back to college, Emily Ehret, Editorial Intern Extraordinaire, writes in on the blog one last time to share how she handles endings in her writing and her personal life, especially when unexpected challenges come her way:

Us writers and our endings. We often spend so long agonizing over getting them just right. Sometimes, it takes us ages to pin them down. Can we ever really satisfy ourselves with an ending? How do we get it exactly right? How do we know when it’s over?

This summer, though, there were a couple of things I was certain of: I knew the ending of the novel I worked on for Camp in July, and I knew the end date of my internship—August 30th. So I knew exactly how long I had to work on my word count and get the most out of my summer at NaNo HQ. In some fantasy of productivity when I arrived here in June, I was certain I would write that ending before saying an elegant farewell and hopping back on a plane for Chicago.

August 30th is here, just as I always knew it would be. But what I didn’t fully expect was all the accompanying emotions.

Surprise! My ending isn’t written. With my draft coming in at around 35,000 words, I’m probably not even halfway there yet. Since my final plot point was planned, I thought the draft would fly off my fingers. I thought I would hit 50k and beyond with few obstacles. But throughout Camp and the rest of the summer, my writing pace was more like a fumbling stroll than a determined run. What was going on with me?

I realized, over time, that coaxing out the emotional arc of my story was going to take a lot more work and time than I thought. Just because I could visualize my book’s final pages didn’t mean that I knew the feelings my characters needed to experience to get there. In some ways, I made it more difficult on myself. Interning and exploring a new city all while living alone was a challenge, and definitely something that took up a lot of my focus. I wasn’t always working on my characters; I was working on me. And that, I decided, is okay. These experiences were well worth it.

While I didn’t grow my word count as much as I would have liked, I personally grew from a summer full of new experiences, my time at NaNo HQ being one of the best. Even time I came into the office or logged onto @NaNoInterns, I had special insight into the community of writers that keep me coming back to NaNoWriMo year after year. I have so much admiration for the all the staff members I met, the bloggers I worked with, and the writers I talked to during VWIs, and it’s hard to have reached the end.

Even though I know it’s the end of my internship here, I’m sure the time I spent with such wonderful Wrimos will keep influencing me and my writing for a long time to come. I may not have written that “perfect” ending yet, but I’m extremely grateful of all the memories I have from my summer here. They will definitely shape many stories to come.

Signing off and as always, wishing you very happy writing,

Intern Emily