Yeah, I did it.I put a still from The Notebook. So What?

Days before I became ill I was fortunate enough to spend a small bit of time with my friend’s father who is an established writer. Earlier in the week I had sent him a few chapters of a novel I’ve been trepidatiously working on; over tea we would discuss his notes.

He unfolded the binder and commended my brutal lucidity and chided that there were some Oscar Wilde worthy moments (it’s no secret to him that Wilde is one of my favorite writers; he was just being encouraging). When he asked me how it was going to end and why I had only come so far with it I broke into tears and excused myself. Despite the unexpected whimpers, I wasn’t uncomfortable enough to say that I’m waiting to see how things turn out in real life. I want this novel to be truth, with very little embellishments and poetry. I’d have to see if my two main characters come back together. If they could live the life I had been planning that Tuesday evening. If I could become again that woman who crossed the pavement at dusk floating on the promise of life. The woman who had the clarity of passion and love.

I had expected his response to be something completely different from the chuckle he gave. “Don’t you know that’s why most of us become fiction writers? We want things to turn out other than they had. We want to be better, stronger, smarter. We want the second chances we’ll never get. We create the endings we never had.”

He was right. I should just admit to myself that things won’t be the same. But what sense of hope could a reader derive from an ending where these two characters never come back to one another? Who wants to read about a Great Love that dies because of a grand mistake and the inability to make oneself heard? I want to give to them what they lost out on in life. In actuality I fight, and I get stronger and learn to live without certain things, but in my novel (and this is not weakness or evasion) I will bestow a final act of kindness.  “The story will resume. She will find him, love him, marry him, and live without shame…”