How is this going to end?

People often ask me where I get the ideas for my books. For me, it’s usually sparked by something in my life or the life of a friend or maybe someone in the news. The book I’m working on at the moment is the partly-fictional life story of my mother-in-law, Lena. She was a remarkable woman who lived an often frantic and sometimes incredible, perhaps occasionally criminal, life. The framework is real, the flesh is fiction.

I never have the “Blank Page Syndrome” other writers complain about. New books are easy. I have several people floating around in my mind right now, demanding their story be written. I’ve told them repeatedly, “You’ll have to wait your turn.”

What I find difficult at times is the ending. For me, it has to satisfy the reader. In my book club, I once read an almost-wonderful book about a hostage crisis based on an actual event. It was a real page-turner all the way through. I became deeply immersed in the characters– the villians, the heroes, and the ordinary people trying to survive in extraordinary circumstances. When the book ended, the crisis was averted and that was IT! After the rescue, there was no resolution for the humans I’d come to know. I wondered—did Jennie and Bob stay together? Did Ron get the revenge he lusted after? Did Imogene ever sing again?

We all complained about it at the discussion. It was so frustrating, I wrote my own ending and gave copies to the other members of the club.

When I write, I try to tie up all the loose ends. I’m about half-way through Lena’s life, which I’m basing on real events, but needed the right place to end it, not with her death, because that was inevitable, but with something that would satisfy. I thought of one big-bam thing and discarded it as so dramatic it wouldn’t seem real to the reader. The second idea was smaller in importance, but still, felt contrived. I didn’t seem right to me.

This morning, I was out early, driving up to my daughter’s house to drop off something she needed for work. I had a Garth Brooks CD in the player and after listening for the second time, just popped it out and drove in silence with Lena on my mind.

The perfect ending for her story came to me. I know it was right because I was driving and crying at the same time. After I was back home, I thought it through again, and it made me cry some more.

Now that I know what to do, I’m not taking my time with the writing the way I usually do, working an hour here and there, then slacking off, sometimes for several days in a row. I know where Lena’s going, and I can’t wait to see her arrive.