So How Does This One End?

"Nothing spoils a story more than a weak or inappropriate ending." 
- Roy Peter Clark, Help! for Writers

In my last post, I referred to the importance of leads in the writing process and the connection with "conversational leads" that people use, particularly in apologies. Tonight I look at the flip-side: the necessity for a strong ending.

The quote I lead with says it all: write a strong ending, and it will crown the passionate prose in the middle. Muddle it up or coast to the finish line, and no one will remember the middle anyway.

As it goes in writing, so it goes in life. I think back to some of the endings to stories in my life and feel the weight of Clark's statement.

I remember the ending at Towanda. Camp Towanda was a summer camp where Emily and I worked the summer before we got married. We both had one year of college left and decided that summer freedom was there for the taking, so we took: we met a guy named "Z" on the UNI campus during a summer work fair who convinced us to come live in Northeast Pennsylvania for 10 weeks over the summer and work the camp. 

I'm tempted to fill the space here with cliches about how great the summer was, but they will be just that - empty words. They will not bring the story to life. I could write books about my experiences that summer, and I hope I do some day. Working with other twenty-somethings from most U.S. states and several countries from around the world, along with the couple hundred Jewish kids attending the camp all summer long, has a way of treating you to life experiences. Our summer at Towanda is not a story; it's a volume.

But that volume has a clear chronology, a beginning and a middle, and suddenly the end was upon us. The ending of the story needed to fit. And it did. As Clark wrote, nothing could have spoiled this haloed time more than a forgettable ending. Instead, I'll remember that night forever. It was an hours-long party at a small-town bar, pitchers of Yuengling Black and Tan flowing, a consistent, raucous din of uproarious laughter and back-slapping and tears and Aussie-slang. We tried to make time stand still, just for a minute; but it didn't. After a few short hours of sleep in a hotel room crowded with Israelis, my future wife and I got up, hugged our two newest lifelong friends, shed a few tears, and closed the story. The concluding paragraph fit masterfully.

Our Sutherland story ended just as perfectly. In English class I teach something called "circular structure" or "framing." In a frame, the conclusion refers back to the lead. It's an effective way to make sure that whatever you're beginning with, it's important and relevant enough that it will make a powerful end as well. Our Sutherland days ended at a grill-out with our friends on the farm of my assistant coach, the same one who invited me to come meet my new team at a grill-out when we first moved there.

My senior year of high school basketball was filled with victories and top ten rankings and endless success. I don't remember any of that nearly as well as I remember the ugly upset we endured at the hands of our rivals well-before the state tournament glory we had envisioned. On too many days, I remember the bitterness of saying goodbye to my beloved teaching and coaching job at Nora Springs under circumstances I didn't think were best for anybody, rather than remembering three of the best years of my career.

The ending matters. No matter how well you've done something, or how good a relationship is, a faulty goodbye, a half-effort near the finish line, or an abrupt and misplaced word can alter the taste of the story so much that the middle of it barely rings true anymore.

I will remember that this month, this final month with my seniors. Five years down the road, for most of them I'll probably be just somebody else whose class they had once upon a time. I know there are some things that I do wrong in the classroom, but I'm also pretty sure that I get a couple of things right. In our final month together, I'll either punctuate my strengths and leave them remembering my classroom fondly, regardless of the demanding schedule I held them to; or instead I'll coast, letting distraction and busyness and grading and self-focus slowly separate us until it was like we never spent a year or three together at all.

We've all been given time. Time to work, time for relationships, time to parent, even time for vacations. And time ends. There will be a close to all of the stories you and I are currently in. Finish those stories strong. The magnitude of the middle depends on it.