A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-Four-Hundred-And-Ninety-Six

I need to end the story I am writing.  I am very close to the ending, I know.  There is not a lot more that can happen in it, really, just the final bit, but it keeps stretching on.  In some ways, I had expected it would.  This piece is a bit of a shaggy dog story, and so it is natural to kind of delay things and stretch it out.  The punch of it is more potent when that balance is properly held, but I know that it is ultimately going to be a disappointment of sorts for the reader.  That is kind of the point, of course, and it has to be done in a way that still works, as well.  In this case, I really want the lack of meaningful resolution to actually have an impact and value that comes out of that lack of understanding.  It is about the character facing that emptiness, not just about the reader being left wondering about it.  The reader's answers have to grow from the character being denied any.

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