A New Ending

I am working once more on a novel with an ending I have to change. Why do I have to change it? Because I wanted the story to end happily. I really did. I fell in love with my characters and with the parts of them that are me, and I wanted to use my fiction as a way to give myself the happy ending that I thought I deserved.

Guess what?

Multiple readers have now told me that the ending doesn’t work. Why doesn’t it work? Because I have already written into the characters the problems that make a happy ending impossible. One part of my mind is writing truth, and the other part of my mind is writing the fantasy that gives a happily ever after ending.

Don’t get me wrong. HEAs are great. Some books have them. I have written books with HEAs before. But here’s the thing: a lot of books you think have HEAs actually don’t. That is, they have a satisfying and perfect ending, but there are also losses suffered to get even that small portion of HEA.

So I’m taking away the HEA, and figuring out a new HEA. That’s another great thing about revising a book. It forces you to find a better ending than the one you originally conceived. Because you usually think of that ending when you’re at the beginning of the book, and as you write and revise, your characters grow beyond that ending. They deserve more, and I’m working hard to give it to them.

In other news, writing is hard. And revising is harder.