End! EEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNND!!!

Hey internet!

Very brief updates about Ze J Larkin:

I will be moving into my own studio apartment. WOO! Possibly soon. Probably I will be sleeping on my mom's couch for a little while if it takes the apartment complex's people a while to process my paperwork.

I am rewriting the entire climax of Ze Book. After I added a new arc, which put me 10 days behind schedule, I got to the climax and realized it made. Zero. Sense. But after much rage-at-self for being enemy-of-self, I have figured all that out and just need to really crush myself against the grind stone and make it happen. Ze Book is much better for it. Trust me.

Ze Book will be in the hands of official Beta readers in November. Woo! Excited! Concerned! Excited! Woo!

And Now Onto Le Blog!!

Let's talk endings.

As I said above, I'm currently reworking the climax of Ze Book. The final chapter remains more or less the same, but the big BAM! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED! moment is completely different. And I have spent a lot of time thinking lately about novel endings.

I've heard it said (okay, read it written) that it is the ending, more than any other part, that a reader will walk away thinking about. It is the ending of a book that determines what a reader will say to their friends about the book. The characters can be awesome, the prose can be ridoncidonculous, but the ending is the thing that weighs on their mind.

This makes sense, of course. If the punchline of a joke is lame, are you going to walk away praising how well it was told? If the climax of a film is the weakest of weak sauces, are you going to walk away talking about how sweet the filmography was?

Maybe. If you're one of those people.

But then, what makes a good ending?

Personally, I like to see the characters struggle. I don't want to read "AHA! And then we won." I want to get concerned. I want to not be able to stop turning pages, even if I'm pretty sure I know how things are going to go down.

I also like to be surprised. As many novels as I've read, it's not often that that happens any more. I've become tragically genre-savvy. Even the books I've loved lately, I knew pretty much exactly what each person was going to do and what role they were going to play before their introductory paragraph was over. But--and oh boy, here is where I get choosy--the surprise can't be the kind of thing you'd only know if you were, say, the author. So I want an 'Aha!' moment, but not a 'Duh!' moment, but not a 'Yeah, whatever' moment.

Picky picky.

What else? I like bookend endings. Themes that tie the ending back to something that happened way at the beginning. It makes me giggle. I don't know.

I like endings that are concise. Boom! BAM! Whammo! Brief conversation. The End.

I saw a movie recently that had the climax about thirty minutes before the ending. It also had thirty minutes of introduction before the movie started. I was screaming at the screen (the theater housed only my sister and I) "END!! EEEEEEEENNNNNND!!!"

On the other hand, a story shouldn't just...end. Boom! BAM! WHAtheend.

No.

Also? I like bittersweet endings. Heavy on the sweet. But it's hard for me to buy a story where EVERYthing is wrapped up neat and pretty with zero loss or quarter given. Life is compromise. A good story is a peek into someone else's life.

One of the best endings I've ever seen?

Granted, this clip skips a great deal of the other issues that are closed up beautifully (until the second movie rips everything all up to shreds for no reason other than to create some pointless drama AAAARGGH WHY DISNEY WHY) but this film, which happens to be on my top five list of all-time favorites, hits all of the points I listed above.

So what about you guys? What do you like in endings? What do you hate? What's an example of one of your favorite endings evar?

Peace out!

-J

No Thanks

Updating the blog a mere three days after the last post?

But here we are.

I would still like to hear your responses to the last post. I just wanted to share a little story with you, people of the internet, that has been spreading a grin across my face all day.

I warn you now, it is entirely about me. Turn back now if you were hoping for something far-reaching or directly applicable to your own lives. Or, if you feel like charging on, I promise to include a tooth-rottingly cute picture of my favorite animal at the end of the post.

Alright.

So, as I mentioned on the other 'You Can't Possibly Get Too Much Of Me' social media sites I'm on, the other day I sent out a bunch of queries for a children's story I wrote. The story would be a picture book, but I'm not interested in doing the pictures myself. I just envision the story going with a sort of sparkly, girly, cutesy art style that is...well, miles away from my own.

Yeah, I don't...I don't draw like this.

And the story took me about an hour to write, so I don't have the tooth-and-nail devotion to it that I do for, say, Ze Book.

Anyhow, I sent out the queries. I in no way expect to have seven agents battling for the right to represent Going to be a Unicorn, partially because my ego is not quite that out of control, and partially because I realize that very few people are actually interested in picture book texts right now. The market is just not leaning in that direction; if anything, most agents who represent picture books at all say (on their sites) that they're interested in author-illustrators. Or previously established authors.

But actually, actively querying and bracing myself for rejection seemed like a good idea. Because, hey, the worst thing that could happen is one agent reads the story, is repulsed, and tells his or her compatriots to avoid the name of J Larkin as though it were a disease you would never discuss in polite conversation. Which is not very likely. And once I am ready to start querying for Ze Book, I know there will be a lot of people who respond with 'Not my thing.' And I want to make sure I'm ready for that sting, beyond knowing how silly it would be to expect everyone to love what I've written.

This morning, at approximately stupid o'clock, my phone made that sound. The sound. The sound that is assigned to sound when my authorial email address is breached.
(The sound, for all those who are curious, can be heard in the clip below).


I rolled over, conked my head on the bedside shelf-thing, and maneuvered my way to the new email before I was fully awake.

Once I was awake, I read two words. The title of this blog post.

No thanks.

I shrugged, hit 'delete,' and rolled back over to catch a couple more hours of sleep. It wasn't until my face was pressed back into the pillow that I realized I'd just received my first rejection letter. Then I grinned.

I'm still grinning now, just thinking about it. I got rejected, and I was cool with it. Of course I care, and I think that if I felt absolute apathy then I'd be headed in the wrong direction. But there was no punch in the gut, no need to stiffen my upper lip, and no consoling necessary.

It's a baby step. Heck, it's not even that. It's more like the baby has finally managed to roll over on its own. Whoopdi-flippin'-do! But still, I feel a little ironic nudge coming from somewhere. I can handle rejection just fine, and get right back to the drawing board to work some more. Maybe I'm cut out for this writing thing after all!

Now, as promised...

D'AWWWWWW =D