Showing posts with label two stars and a wish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label two stars and a wish. Show all posts

Friday, June 24, 2011

Two Stars and A Wish for My Novel Ending

I've been struggling with revising the ending to my novel. I've gotten great feedback from my critique partners. I've revisited my blurbs and summaries. I've scribbled notes and arrows all over my writing notebook. And all I have to show for it is a jumble of confused thoughts and a cursor stuck on Chapter 26. 

I finally gave up and walked away from it on Wednesday, hoping that taking a break for a couple of days would spark some new ideas. It's so discouraging when a part of the writing just isn't working, it starts to me thinking that the whole thing is terrible.

So, today I'm going to borrow a trick from my day job as a teacher. When students reflect on their work, we sometimes  ask them to think about two things they liked or did well with, and one wish for something they could have done differently or improved on. I'm going to try that with the ending of my novel. I hope it will help me appreciate what IS working as well as to help me pinpoint exactly what it is that I need to fix.