Endings and Beginnings

Beginnings: Recently, I began working (again) on my Pride and Prejudice variation entitled Disappearing Act. If you want a preview of that book, check out the end of my Austenesque collection The Significance of Sisters: A Collection of Austenesque Fiction, where I’ve included the first chapter. Then visit the JAFF Writer/Reader Get Together for more info about the WIP reading on March 13, when I’ll read an excerpt from Chapter 2 of the novel. Several other Austenesque writers (including, last I heard, the incomparable Abigail Reynolds and amazing Lucy Marin) will also be reading from their latest works-in-progress!

Endings: I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the endings of novels. I’ve always had a hard time accepting the end of a good book, and I’ve certainly wrestled with writing decent endings for my own novels.

Still, for all that I struggled writing my most recent book, The Year in Between: A Sense and Sensibility Variation, I felt pretty good about the end. After all, Jane Austen had written it for me! I always knew I was going to end that book with Marianne’s marriage to Brandon. When I was about halfway through writing the first draft of the novel, I did think I would write an epilogue entitled “And So” — an epilogue that would tell us, from the perspective of Marianne’s journal, a little bit about her first day and night as a married woman. I believed that this ending would provide a nice sort of symmetry to the novel, as the book opens with a prologue (“And Yet”), which has Marianne writing a journal entry lamenting her heartbreak over Willoughby.

By the time I actually reached the end of the book, however, I decided against including the epilogue. I had come to feel as if this story was as much about Marianne and Elinor — and all the women who had supported them — as it was about Marianne and Brandon’s romance. I feared the epilogue would make the book feel lopsided, as if Marianne’s romance more important than any other storyline.

Not everyone agreed.

One of the many beautiful aspects of the Austenesque community is the conversation that we writers get to have with readers. Not face-to-face conversations, usually, but certainly an exchange of ideas through reviews, blog posts, and Facebook. Thanks to a review by a very thoughtful reader, I began to think more about the epilogue I never finished. That reader felt the book was missing an ending–that Marianne and Brandon’s story should have been given more weight.

After much thought, I decided I was happy with the ending I chose-–but I also understood this reader’s point of view. I regretted that the reader felt robbed of an ending. And since I already had an epilogue drafted, why not flesh it out and post it here? (Thanks so much to my dear friend and author Colleen Cowley for the idea to do this, as well as for her encouragement along the way! If you want to read books with great endings, you should definitely check out her books!)

And so, on my blog, I've posted “bonus” epilogue to The Year in Between.

If you haven’t read the book, you may want to skip this, as there are minor spoilers, and the epilogue makes more sense if you’ve read the book. Then again, the epilogue can’t be much of a spoiler because, as I’ve already indicated, the book ends with Marianne’s marriage to Brandon! So hey, do what feels right to you. 🙂

If you have read the book, you may feel that the epilogue still doesn’t provide a satisfying ending. I am nothing if not an imperfect writer! Nevertheless, I thought I’d share this for anyone who wanted a peek into my writing process, or for those who just wanted a bit more of Marianne and Brandon.

(Also, for those readers who grew to love Brandon as much as I did, stay tuned: in March, I plan to post a scene from the middle of the book–the library scene–told from Brandon’s perspective.)

Here is the link to the epilogue (though you'll have to scroll past the same introduction I wrote above).

Thanks for reading!