Perspective of Age
I have working on a writing project this week, a story about a kid.
And I made it through 95-percent of the story and I was messed up on the ending. What happens to this kid? He has to make a choice at the end. I’m telling you, I was hung up on a few lousy sentences or paragraphs. I’d created this beast of a great character, this whole story, and I had no idea how to solve it in the end.
Now, if I was 19 and doing this as a college paper, I would have been quick and dirty with the out. My mentaility would be to bank on all the good stuff I had written and figure he just rides off into the sunset.
When I was 29, I would have made it very updbeat and “boy beats world” in the end. Everything comes up roses.
At 39, I am going to write it so it’s still cloudy at the end to the point you don’t know, even at its conclusion, whether to like his, hate him, root for him, or just think it’s all tragic. Waaaaaaay more complex ending at 39 than I ever would have thought of 20 years ago in college.
I think it’s like almost always, depending on the decade and time and place; you could teach the literary merits of To Kill a Mockingbird, for instance, from several perspectives. Was it about hope or was it was about tragedy? Was it about feeling good or feeling sad? I mean, in the hands of the various ages you might have read it, you could make lots of arguments.
The same comes with writing. I am writing this way different than I would have before. I’m ending it different, too.
Nothing may ever come of any of it, but it was fun to write just to realize that.