Greetings, Internearthlings. I just made that word up. It's a combination of "Internet" and "earthlings."
(THINGS ACCOMPLISHED TODAY: 1)
So this post is part of The Writing Process Blog Tour, which you know if you read the title. And if you didn't, you can go read it now before you either proceed to the next paragraph or lose interest and wander over to YouTube hoping to find something more glorious than John Houseman hawking Puritan Oil. SPOILER: YOU WON'T. [UPDATE: The YouTube video is gone. What are you afraid of, YouTube? John Houseman and his healthful oil will not be silenced!I found them here!]
The Writing Process Blog Tour is a Blog Tour in which Writers discuss The Writing Process. You get tagged by a writer and you then tag another writer, and soon we will all know about The Writing Process of every writer on Internearth.
I was tagged by:
Alicia Potter! Alicia's newest picture book, Jubilee! One Man's Big, Bold, and Very, Very Loud Celebration of Peace, illustrated by Matt Tavares,just came out from Candlewick Press and Publishers Weekly couldn't wait to throw a star at it because it is that fabulous. You can check out Alicia's other books here. And then you should buy them all because her books are amazeballs, and I don't pull out "amazeballs" very often.
There are four questions that are part of The Writing Process Blog Tour. Here they are.
What am I currently working on?
My next novel from St. Martin's Press! It's a kinda steampunky, kinda mythological fantasy called Redwing and it contains boiling water, ash, and extra-big ostriches. UPDATE: I have decided that its new title is Extra-Big Ostriches.
I also have a new cat, so I'm working on smoothing inter-cat relations in the context of a small studio apartment. The transition is taking lots of patience and love, but I'm happy to say all three cats are starting to become snuggle friends. Haha, I'm just kidding. It's Catpocalypse and we're all going to die.
How does my work differ from others of its genre?
Um. Well, I hop genres quite a bit, but in terms of this book that's just come out, which I'll refer to as SSS (pronounced "Sssssssss . . . "), I think I've got a bit of a different take on music in fantasy. I feel like when music has a biggish role in a fantasy/magical realism novel, there's often a literal magic associated with it.
Yes, Google images of "music and magic" . . . this exactly.
But in SSS, which takes place at a music conservatory, there isn't any actual magic associated with the music itself. It's all in other places, like the homicidal space cat.
Why do I write what I write?
People who read this blog (you should probably mentally put at least two of those words in quotes) might suspect that my novels are full of shenanigans, but they actually have, like, feelings and stuff in them. And sometimes violence and gore. A relative of mine came to a reading last week, which was very nice of her, but didn't buy the book, which is totally fine. In fact, I didn't even notice she didn't buy the book, but she found my boyfriend at work the next day and she and her husband made a point of telling him they didn't buy the book because of "all the violence," and then they were like, "That's what's ruining the young people today and we just won't support that." So I guess I write what I write in order to ruin the young people. How does my individual writing process work?
I'm very linear. I start with one sentence that turns into one paragraph that (usually) turns into one scene. That's the basis for the rest of the story, and it's usually the first scene. Then I write until I get to the end.
I have to write each sentence in order, and I revise compulsively as I go. So it has happened that I've stared at my laptop for literally like three hours trying to write one sentence, even though I should have been able to skip that sentence and write stuff after it.
This came up in my search for "stare," to illustrate me staring at my laptop for hours. And, you know . . . it's not wrong.
Sometimes it takes me a very long time to get to the end.
But at that point I have a thing that has a beginning, middle, and end, and that's when I can figure out how everything should fit together. Or if it fits together. It's really sad when it doesn't.
This is me in sad airplane form.
Who's Next: I'm tagging Erin E. Moulton! Her newest novel, Chasing the Milky Way, comes out in June. Erin is a fellow graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and she likes raspberries and hound dogs, and she has published two other heartfelt novels -- Flutter and Tracing Stars -- and if I tell you one more awesome thing about her you will probably lose your mind. OK, she lives in New Hampshire, the greatest state evah!
I have strayed once again over to EMU's Debuts, so if you are interested in those ramblings, head on over by clicking here!
As a super special extra thank you for visiting me here on the mothership, I'll give you an exclusive eyeball at the photo I refer to in the EMU post with No Googling Necessary!
Trying to appear interesting, or trying to appear conscious? You decide.
As a super extra added megabonus bonus, here's a crappy photo of the awesome publicity poster for The Man Who Laughs:
I do not have any pictures of the gibbet, but it's possible I will be able to procure some. Stay tuned!
UPDATE: GIBBET
Complete with shoes and emotionally scarred child!
As I work on my next post, in which I have, like, actual stuff to say about words, I thought I would fill you in on the heroic life I have been leading this month. First off, yes, I used the word indefatigability in the title of this post.That in itself is inspiring, even though I got it from the Thesaurus under "perseverance," which I spelled wrong. You're welcome.
I got so much stuff done this month. I did a bunch of freelance editing. I designed some ads for clients. I went through my fonts, and you should know that I have amassed awesome fonts. Don't even talk to me unless you have the Thundercats font, and we'll start from there.
I took this picture of my cat, Bert. I Gordon, who just sneezed cat boogers all over me as I typed that.
It kind of looks like he has five legs.
Then I got plague, which my body decided to fight by coughing up everything inside itself, including what I believe were a couple major organs and possibly a femur. And because comedy is everything, my body decreed that this process would be accompanied by the whimsical call of the Canada Goose, emanating from my ravaged esophagus. But fear not, dear ones -- because of half a bottle of Ny-Quil my indomitable spirit, I realized that, instead of being diseased, I was actually being enhanced.
I was being granted the powers of the Canada Goose.
Ah, the majesty.
Then Goose Plague and I went to the city to sing the Beethoven Missa Solemnis at a copyrighted location I like to refer to as "Flarnegie Hall."
It was kind of a weird couple days.
We sang in the back row of the chorus, right on top of the enormous speakers for the organ.
WE HEARD A LOT OF ORGAN.
Then home again, jiggity jig, at which point I decided to play Mass Effect 3 broker world peace, which I think we can all agree is working out nicely.
My latest triumph in the face of adversity has been dusting off my bootstraps, or whatever the young people are saying nowadays, after possibly having been rejected by my favorite blog.
That's right. I submitted a portrait to Nic Cage As Everyone, and it has yet to appear. In fact, I have yet to even receive a response to my inspiring email: "This is Nic Cage as a molecule of adamantane."
And yet, my friends, we persevere! We indefatigate! We suffer the honks and arrows of outrageous organs!
I've recently become the proud owner of this early 20th century handbook:
It contains everything you needed to know about everything, from handling your finances to keeping chickens to staining your musical instruments.
No more excuses for shoddy cement. I'm looking at you, Al Capone.
Needless to say, I am now significantly more well-informed than the rest of you, and will have a much greater chance of survival during the zombie/vampire/unfinished wood apocalypse.
But I am nothing if not astonishingly magnanimous, so I thought I would share two excerpts that will be particularly useful to writers.
The first, of course, is how to make your own writing desk:
(Click to enlarge.)
Your homemade desk looks like a million bucks!
(Literally, with prices adjusted for inflation.)
And when you're done with your desk, you only need to make yourself some new ink, and you're all set to go!
Beats the heck out of tickling squids.
That's how they get it, right? Tickling?
So what are you waiting for? The Great American Novel awaits! Here, I'll get you started: Once upon a time, there were two middle-to-upper-class families. Or maybe three. And there were, like, a hundred people in each family, who I will now name one by one, even though you won't be able to keep most of them straight anyway...
Ah. Potassium bicromate, logwood extract, borax, shellac, and ammonia . . . the smell of LITERATURE!
Okay, so, yes, I know writers are cool. All my writer friends are very cool. But it just seems like the badass characters and fantasy worlds and new slang and life-changing social commentary get all the cred, while the minds they came from are forced to wander the earth in grandma sweaters and tasteful suits.
If you saw Zane Grey on the street, for instance, you probably wouldn't even recognize him.
However, if you ran into Dorian Gray, you'd probably --
I'm sorry, what? I seem to have lost my . . .
my train of . . . something.
I was looking at some guitar magazines recently, and man, those guys are cool. They sling their greasy hair around like it ain't no thing while shredding on their Fenders (check out my research), and nakedly parade themselves like the supermodels they aren't. And it's not just the musicians; the whole culture of Guitar is cool -- models, strings, picks, amps, pedals, software, accessories, bands, fashion.
I want to say . . . Tom?
I don't know, I can't tell anyone in the Doobie Brothers apart.
So why can't writing be cool, too?
I've decided to launch a MEGA MEDIA BLITZ CAMPAIGN MOVEMENT to promote the fact that writers are just as cool as rockstars.
Phase 1: Come up with a hashtag!
Tweet your writing rockstar moments #writingisforrockstars.
Example:
Woke up 2 PBR cans & Moleskines everywhere. #writingisforrockstars
Phase 2: Photoshop stuff!
Create writing rockstar ads! Share them with the world!
Okay, I actually don't have Photoshop anymore since I somehow managed to damage it so badly it refused to work again. But I do have Gimp, which is kind of just as good. And free. Go figure. Here are some I did this morning:
. . . And by "Africa," of course, I mean Toto's 1982 synth-marimba rockin' hit.
According to Wikipedia, which is the only research I'll be doing for this post because screw research, Toto member Jeff Porcaro explains the song thusly: "... a white boy is trying to write a song on Africa, but since he's never been there, he can only tell what he's seen on TV or remembers in the past."
I'm sorry, Toto, but you can't fool us with your fancy words and pretentious analysis. This isn't Harvard, it's America, and we can read between the lines.
Why would Toto write a song about werewolves? Theories exist, but that's a topic for another discussion.
That bearded guy in the middle clearly has an agenda. You can't hide forever.
For the skeptics, let's go through the lyrics together. (We don't need to look at the music as it pretty much speaks for itself, starting with the fact that the song is in A major -- the go-to key for the werewolf subculture.)
I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
OK, these first lines of text are incredibly rich, but let's just touch on a couple things. The first line establishes the song's nocturnal theme, immediately giving it a supernatural -- and, specifically, lycanthropian -- flavor, and the call to action, represented by the drums. In a deeper analysis, drums, which are created from the stretched skin of animals, are also an allusion to the belief that wearing the skin of a wolf can cause one to become afflicted with the werewolf curse.
The isolation the protagonist feels is also illustrated beautifully here with the clear psychological separation between himself and the unnamed female character, who represents both the main character's personal relationships and humanity in general. What's especially intriguing is that, whatever this "quiet conversation" concerns, the female character herself is not fully aware of it -- creating even more distance between the main character and the conversation. And what is the conversation about? One can only speculate. Repressed guilt? Fear of exposure? Loneliness?
And, of course, the fact that the main character can hear the drums but his female companion cannot is an overt reference to werewolves' superhuman senses, while simultaneously raising the question, "Do these drums exist in reality or merely in the werewolf's mind?"
"Anatomy is destiny." -- Sigmund Freud
She's coming in 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
Here we have a direct reference to moonlight, the catalyst for the werewolf's monthly transformation, but it is juxtaposed with the idea of "salvation." In all likelihood, this is a reference to the medieval belief that exorcism or conversion to Christianity was a remedy for the werewolf curse, although it could just be a broader expression of the prospect of being cured.
What I find particularly fascinating about this passage is what is possibly the introduction of a second unnamed female character, one who has not yet arrived but whose arrival is imminent. She could be the character from the second line, but if that is the case, the werewolf is somehow able to understand what she is experiencing without being in close proximity to her.
Either way, she is a paradoxical image here; if we are to continue with our focus on Christianity, this woman clearly has angelic qualities, namely her "moonlit wings." However, these wings are reflecting the starlight that would guide the werewolf to his salvation. The question here obviously becomes, "Is this reflecting serving to augment the stars' guiding light, or to distort it?"
Scholars have made the argument that this second female character is indeed a benevolent force, as evidenced by the second occurrence of the line ". . . it's waiting there for you," in which the word "it's" is changed to "she's," indicating the angel will at last have led the werewolf to his absolution. However, history tells us the argument could be made that this is a punishing angel, and she may even be the cause of the werewolf's affliction; as St. Thomas Aquinas said, "All angels, good and bad, have the power of transmutating our bodies."
Hoping to find some old, forgotten words or ancient melodies He turned to me as if to say, "Hurry, boy, it's waiting there for you."
This is one of my favorite stanzas. Here, the werewolf looks to the old man (the personification of a combination of wisdom and folklore) for assistance, in a direct reference to the idea that certain spoken words can release a werewolf from its curse. From Wikipedia: "In the German lowland of Schleswig-Holstein, a werewolf could be cured if one were to simply address it three times by its Christian name, while one Danish belief holds that simply scolding a werewolf will cure it."
The stanza ends with the old man's delightfully playful use of the term "boy" to address the protagonist, which, of course, immediately evokes a man speaking to a beloved canine.
since we ourselves are human beings." -- Albert Einstein
It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa Gonna take some time to do the things we never have
This section, the chorus, is largely self-explanatory, illustrating both the werewolf's superhuman strength and the enormity of his efforts to cure himself. The first line is also a particularly lovely expression of lycanthrope duality -- the fact that man and beast, though enemies, are one being.
Personally, I am intrigued by the rain imagery here. At the surface, the rains appear to represent a healing, nourishing force, but it is my opinion that this may also be an allusion to the superstition that drinking rainwater from the footprint of an animal can give one the power to become that animal. Of course, one can overanalyze these things!
"I think we all have to fight the werewolf within us somehow." -- William Kempe
The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
My apologies in advance for the fact that these lines would be better interpreted by someone more familiar with the werewolf subculture, but here is how I understand them. "Wild dogs" is a term werewolves use to describe themselves within the community, though there is disagreement among scholars as to whether this may be applied to all lycanthropes or simply those currently in "wolf" form (in either case, it is considered disrespectful, though not explicitly offensive, for a non-werewolf to use the term). These lines are especially moving because they are the text's most vivid examples of the protagonist expressing -- albeit obliquely -- his personal anguish.
The phrase "solitary company" is perhaps the most fascinating paradox in the entire song, as the two states of being -- "solitary" and with "company" -- seem at first to be mutually exclusive. In fact, the only way this could occur would be for the "wild dog" in question to be at once an individual and two beings. So we see, these lines are possibly the strongest evidence we have that "Africa" is indeed a thinly-veiled werewolf story.
love and hate, are necessary to human existence." -- William Blake
I know that I must do what's right
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
"Hope" has been a recurring theme in this song -- we haven't touched on it before now, but I'm sure you've noticed it as we've gone through the text. Here, at last, we have not only the culmination of the werewolf's determination to find his salvation, but a final acknowledgement of the hope and conviction that have sustained him throughout his journey.
Particularly elegant here is the comparison of Mount Kilimanjaro to Mount Olympus. It's easy to find any number of books and essays devoted exclusively to this subject, but let me highlight the main points. Firstly, comparing the two mountains instantly connects the song's actual setting to a place inextricably tied to werewolf mythology -- Ancient Greece. (While the argument could be made that, even with the comparison, one still has to make the mental leap from modern Greece to Ancient Greece, I contend that the mystical feel of the text will automatically evoke not only the era but, specifically, the mythology of the culture in most listeners.) Wikipedia cites numerous examples in Ancient Greek literature of humans becoming wolves, most notably Lycaon, who became a wolf as punishment for murder.
In a larger sense, the fact that the protagonist is reminded of Mount Olympus -- home to the gods -- shows us that he feels, at least subconsciously, a connection to the rest of humanity. After all, the gods of Olympus watch, torment, and assist man and wolf-man alike.
I just got back from a crazy week singing Porgy & Bess and Beethoven's 9th symphony. (Pretty sure one of them contained the line, "Bring my goat!" It's kind of a blur.)
I had a lovely roommate for the duration. One day, I happened to look down at our shared nightstand.
You say, "To-may-toe," I say, "To-mah-toe."
You say, "Woman: An Intimate Geography by somebody who won the Pulitzer,"
I say, "Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle."
This says something about something, doesn't it? I don't know.
But look at that cute puppy! AWWWWWWW. Who's literary? Who is it? Is it YOU?
(Found by me and "composed" by my father, who may or may not have been suffering from heat stroke, whilst listening to the Grieg piano concerto in the car.)
Imagine if shrews wrote symphonies?
They'd be so fast it'd be unbelievable.
The shrews would play those tiny violins so fast they'd be on fire,
And they'd be biting each other at the same time,
Jostling for position in the orchestra.
Of course, the movements would have to be short.
Shrews have to eat, like, every fifteen minutes.
But they could have a lot of movements.
A shrew symphony would probably have, like, twenty-four movements.
Have you ever had one of those epiphanic moments in which you realize the absurdity of the thing you're doing? A thing that, until five seconds ago, you thought was totally normal?
My parents never have those moments.
I sing in the chorus of one of those orchestras that you can't take pictures of or look at or have prolonged reveries about, or else there will be Paperwork and something about Dues and Property and This Many Minutes of Break Time.
Here we are at a venue I'll call "Flarnegie Hall."
It's a lot of fun, actually, getting to sing great music under world-class conductors. It's challenging and fulfilling -- an incredible experience.
Then there are the bats.
You see, we're not always playing Flarnegie Hall or Flymphony Hall. In the summer, we play outside, in a green, picturesque, probably hypo-allergenic setting, replete with large, tidy trees and velvety lawns.
"You! Third oak on the right! Leaf color may be tawny or ochre only! No amber until after Labor Day!"
Now, I like bats. I do. You know why? Because I hate mosquitoes. And because bats are so fuzzy and wacky and hang-upside-downy, like my own personal army of kooky sidekicks.
Yeah.
No, it's what the bats represent. Nature. Don't get me wrong; I like nature, too.
See? I have a cat.
But singing classical music in a snow-white, floor-length dress for people who have paid more for their tickets than I will spend on Ramen over my entire lifetime tends to put me in what I think of as a Civilization Bubble.It's therapeutic. Here we all are onstage, uniform, performing some of the best examples of human creation with precision and (respectable) passion. No one is fidgeting. No one has to cough. No one has guts or stomachs or sinuses. We're caught in an ethereal plane, vessels of art and purity.
But then nature starts happening.
At our last performance, everything was going well. We sounded good. We looked good. The audience was sophisticated and appreciative. We were Civilized.
Artist's rendition.
Then a mosquito bit me, and suddenly, my butt itched. That was not Civilized. And then came the bats. Just a couple of them, silently swooping amidst the scaffolding. And it dawned on me: Everyone's ignoring them. Of course they were. That's what you do. You are a servant of the music. Bats don't exist. Itchy butts don't exist. Only the music exists.
It was kind of cool, actually.
But I had broken free of the Civilization Bubble; I was only observing it now. I became imbued with a heightened awareness of everything else that was going on, unrelated to Berlioz. Itches started popping up everywhere. My nose noticed the pollen in the air. I felt a bug slowly crawling across the top of my head, under my hair. All this as the audience drank their champagne and the reviewers took snarky little notes and the musicians floated along as if we were perched in the Emperor's pristine parlor instead of outside with bugs crawling on our heads.
Even so, it was only when the giant -- I mean giant -- moth immolated itself on one of the lights and plummeted into the altos that I began to feel crazy self-conscious. What was I doing here? What were any of us doing here, a bunch of squishy, fidgety, smelly, hairy creatures trying to inhabit this ethereal domain?
Not what Berlioz had in mind.
There is no moral to this story. I didn't learn anything. I just sort of got over it, eventually. It was kind of like when you pick a word and say it over and over until it sounds like totally weird.
FUTON
FUTON
FUTON
FUTON
FUTON
FUTON
FUTON
FUTON
Maybe it's okay that we're all itchy, squirmy bags of nasty liquid who perform art music. Maybe that's kinda cool, even.
(Warning: This is a post about the endings of books.)
Recently, my brilliant and good-looking critique partners told me I had to kill off one of my main characters. But I want him to liiiiiiiiive! No, they said. That would not be a satisfying ending.
They are probably right, as they are about most things. But it's a tricky phrase, satisfying ending. It doesn't imply contentment or justice, only natural resolution. Surprising yet inevitable, as someone once said. (Probably John Gardiner. He said a lot of things in that book I didn't read because I thought Grendel was pretentious.)
So I've been mulling over this concept of "satisfying ending." Is an ending satisfying if you are bawling for an hour afterwards? Is it satisfying if it's ambiguous? If everything works out the way you want? If the good end happily and the bad unhappily, for that is what fiction means?
Fiction!
A satisfying ending has to be believable, we have to be invested in the characters, and there should be some kind of resolution of tension. And, just like in music, the greater the tension, the greater the payoff.
And we can wait. Sure we can. Frodo still hasn't thrown that damn ring into the volcano? Take your time. It's going to take 800 pages to kill Voldemort? No problem. Heck, in his opera Tristan und Isolde, Wagner makes us wait four hours to hear a freaking harmonic resolution, and we only get it when (SPOILER ALERT!) Isolde dies.
FINALLY.
But once we get there, we've got to feel it. The ending is one of the most frustrating places to overly feel the writer's hand pushing the characters -- or our emotions -- around against their wills. We know when something is not right.
The End.
All of those elements -- believability, investment, natural resolution -- can be accomplished with vastly different types of endings. Since all of life's important lessons can be learned from Wayne's World, I thought I'd examine that film's three different endings as examples of popular conventions. Which team are you on?
For those of you who need a refresher, lovable teenagers(?) Wayne and Garth do a quirky, popular public access show out of Wayne's mom's basement. But sleazy TV exec Rob Lowe gets the rights and wants to exploit them! Also Wayne is in love with this super hot girl who's in a band named Crucial Taunt, and she starts making eyes at Rob Lowe.
Decisions, decisions.
Wayne and Garth and their friends hatch a plot to have Crucial Taunt perform and to bounce the signal directly into the limo of a passing record producer, Mr. Big, who will then presumably offer the band a sweet deal. And screw Rob Lowe! Somehow.
Luckily for our study, Wayne's World offers up three different endings.
THE SAD ENDING
The record exec sees the performance, but doesn't offer the band a contract. Super hot girl leaves Wayne for Rob Lowe, Wayne's psycho ex-girlfriend reveals she is pregnant, and somehow Wayne's house burns down. The movie ends with Wayne carrying Garth's charred body from the wreckage and shouting, "Why, God? Why??"
Sad endings work for me when I take away something from the story that is greater than just sadness. The cases that don't work for me aren't necessarily poorly written -- some of them are brilliant -- and I don't necessarily take away only sadness from them. But the sadness overshadows everything else, and for that reason, I don't think they help me grow. Think Charlotte's Web (sad, lovely, poignant, I'm never eating bacon again, okay I'm eating bacon again, life is hard but it's worth it, friends are important) versus Old Yeller (OMG HE JUST SHOT OLD YELLER).
I also think tragedy can be an easy substitute for depth.
"Jeez, all the leper orphans died? GIVE THIS AUTHOR A NEWBERY!"
THE HAPPY ENDING
(Known in Wayne's World as the Mega-Happy Ending.) Mr. Big offers Crucial Taunt a record deal, Rob Lowe gets a body cavity search and realizes there's more to life than being evil, and his henchman discovers that platonic love can exist between two grown men. The movie ends with Wayne asking, "Isn't it great to know we're all better people?" before everyone makes fish faces.
Happy endings work for me when I reeeeeeeally want them. I think the happy ending can be the most dangerous -- it has the potential to make a story forgettable because nothing lingers to bother us afterwards. I think the way to avoid this is to really make us work for our happy ending. For example, Jane Eyre grudgingly gives us our -- mostly -- happy ending only after terrible sorrow and drudgery and loss, and by the time we get there, it's just what we need.
Yaaaaaaaay!
THE SCOOBY DOO ENDING
Okay, in Wayne's World, the Scooby Doo ending is the ending where they rip off Rob Lowe's face to reveal Old Man Withers who runs the amusement park, "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for --" well, you know. It's absurd and insane.
In modern parlance, this might be known as the WTF Ending (not to be confused with the It Was All A Dream Ending, which should never, ever be employed under any circumstances unless you are Lewis Carroll. And even then, f@*k you, Lewis Carroll).
You heard me.
A good Scooby Doo ending -- that which appears to come out of left field -- remains surprising yet inevitable, with the reader completely wrapped up in the surprising part to the point where its inevitability can be completely obscured. What was your reaction the first time you read Salinger's "A Perfect Day For Bananafish"? Mine was this face: o.O
When I finished reading M. T. Anderson's Thirsty, I threw it across the room. It took me three days to figure out I didn't hate it; I loved it. Yet Thirsty contains possibly one of the least satisfying endings in YA lit, at least on first glance. But it holds up. Is it inevitable? Certainly. Is it surprising? At first. It's surprising the book ends when and how it does, although in retrospect, there is no other way for it to end. Quick, what's the last line of Thirsty? If you've read it, you just said that line out loud. That's an ending.
I would lump the Ambiguous Ending in with the Scooby Doo Ending -- it's kind of its chilled out older brother. I think the Twist Ending, however, is more of a subcategory.
Do you have a penchant for certain types of endings? Do you love crying for Wuthering Heights, skipping around the apartment for Sense and Sensibility, or pondering I Capture the Castle?
