Embarrassing Endings

Confession time!

Confession 1: I am in a rush, so this will be quick
Confession 2: I missed a day at the weekend so will have to catch up!

Still sticking to random inspirations, I decided to run my eye down the list of other A-Z blogs, find one belonging to someone whose name began with an E, and be inspired by that. Luckily it didn’t take long –  I came across this blog: Workingmymuse by Eric.

I will forgive him for bracketing Benny Hill with Monty Python in his ‘F’ post (even though this is sacrilege and I’m crying, inwardly, on the Pythons’ behalf). I do so because he wrote this in his E post about writing endings:

“I actually had a very embarrassing moment once (when I was in a writing class no less).  I had to finish up this short story I was working on (which incidentally I’m still revising), and when I got to the end, I just didn’t know how to end it.  So I went all melodramatic and wrote an ending that I was definitely ashamed of later.”

Endings that you’re ashamed of struck a chord with me because one of my juvenile story endings has become a family legend. And I still have the book with the story in -somewhere. I was only 7 or 8 when I wrote it and my teacher was very impressed by my idea (it was all about a trip to another planet and some aliens who, I think, were invited on board the spaceship). It was detailed. It had dialogue and plot. All sorts of stuff.

However! Like my son, who is a brilliant writer (I say that as a fact, not a gloat, because he will be – perhaps already is!- farrr better than me), I did sometimes have a problem getting my work finished in the allotted time at that age. So when the teacher had said, ‘right, that’s it, time to finish!’ I had panicked. All the plots and imaginative descriptions went out the window. Character motivation? Pah! I had aliens in my story, and back then we all knew what aliens did.

Hence my brilliant story ended thus:

‘The aliens turned. “We will eat you!” they cried.
And they did.’

Hah! Come on Eric – bring it on. I dare you to say that your ending was worse than mine! 🙂