Karl Whitney: Looking for the right ending? Try taking two steps back

Finding the right ending is not always obvious but the best part of being a writer is not to get distracted by conclusions, rather to get lost in the joy of the work

Karl Whitney has been writing for newspapers for 27 years now. His start, strangely enough, came not in Irish papers but at ‘The Guardian’ in the UK. File picture: iStock

And so, I wish to conclude by saying……By saying what? This will be the final column, and I want to discuss endings.

Finding the right ending can be hard. You’ve begun to gallop through the writing and, suddenly, you find yourself having to tie up loose ends, slow down, stop. 

The anxiety of ending, of leaving the work behind.

Then there’s the tendency writers have to write beyond their ending — to not see a good ending when they’ve written it, and to continue for a few sentences, or even paragraphs. 

The ending will be discovered in the editing, when they re-read their work and zero in on a suitable conclusion. 

Cut and paste and rewire the piece of writing so that what seems the best ending now comes last.

Perhaps you included a quote near the end but then wrote beyond it because you thought it needed further explanation. 

Then when you look again it doesn’t. You’ve begun to babble while you look for an exit.

Suddenly, by pruning the piece, you leave the reader with a riddle to be solved, a final sentence that makes them regard what they have just read in a different way. 

It’s thought-provoking. It triggers a question in the reader’s mind that may have been bubbling under as they read the piece but is now brought to the surface.

I think about this approach as taking two steps back to find what you really meant to say. The reason is obvious: so often in life we don’t fully recognise when something’s over. 

At least you can edit a piece of writing

We only pinpoint the end in retrospect. As in life, so in writing. At least you can edit a piece of writing.

You might want to tie the piece up neatly, and, because of this mania for control, you craft it too tightly: it’s all sensible and logical and it results in the reader getting there before you. 

They can anticipate the ending and they switch off.

That’s why, as I’ve said in the past, you need to preserve the mystery of what you’re writing — from yourself as much as from the reader. 

If you do, the ending will sidle up to you and surprise you. Once it does, you’ll recognise it as a fitting conclusion to your piece of writing, one that you didn’t fully anticipate.

Endings can trigger memories of beginnings. Lately I’ve started to reminisce. I’ve been writing for newspapers for 27 years now. My start, strangely enough, came not in Irish papers but at The Guardian in the UK.

Back then, there were substantial supplements on weekdays that contained job listings — one for media, another for education, and so on. 

The Education supplement included a page to which university students could contribute short pieces.

I was 20 years old and studying in University College Dublin. The world of newspapers, especially London papers, seemed a world away.

I was interested in humour writing, particularly American writers whose work had appeared in The New Yorker in the early- to mid-20th century: SJ Perelman, Robert Benchley, James Thurber.

None of these writers were necessarily the sort of influence you might absorb if you wanted to make it as a journalist in the late nineties. There was no strategy to it; I just liked that kind of writing. 

Nevertheless, they were the influences that I channelled when I wrote the piece that caught the eye of the page’s editor, Emily Moore. 

She published that piece, and five more, before — from what I can remember — the page was done away with.

It gave me a taste for writing for publication, one that hasn’t left me.

 It also illustrated that, as a writer, following your nose, writing the way you want to and absorbing influences that weren’t necessarily the obvious ones, could result in finding the right reader. 

Something in the work was communicated to a reader who could see the good in it.

Belief in writer's work ebbs and flows

As a writer your belief in your work ebbs and flows. Sometimes you feel like nothing you write is good enough; at other times you’re completely blind to the flaws in your work. 

Eventually, you need to get it out there to someone who’s more objective about the work than you are. Exposing your writing to others can be a positive experience, but you also feel vulnerable. It’s tempting not to show it to anyone at all.

But eventually the urge to communicate with the wider world wins out.

Three years ago, I was working as an editor at a book publisher while also teaching writing to students when I approached Michael Moynihan, the books editor here at the Irish Examiner, about potentially doing a series of essays that looked at writing from a variety of perspectives. 

I’m surprised, and happy, that it continued for as long as it did.

It’s not that there wasn’t plenty of writing advice out there in the world already. 

But I thought I could at least try to be honest about the process from my own position — that of a published author, editor and teacher — drawing from the jumble of skills I had assembled over the years.

I wanted what I wrote in these columns to be, at least in part, autobiographical; to trace my journey through the world. 

By the middle of each month, I would have an essay that related to some aspect of writing that interested me. 

It was invariably drawn from life: a conversation with someone I met, a walk to the shops, a trip to a museum.

Writing doesn’t happen in isolation. Life can help or hinder your writing. Writing can help or hinder your life. 

With both writing and life, over time, you learn to go a little easier on yourself. There’s a balance to be struck.

One of the most challenging aspects of writing is learning to stick with it. You can choose to do it as much or as little as you like. 

Writers aren’t born, they’re self-made. Habits and routine play an important part.

But the habits that sustain a writer can drop away. It can take a long time to get them back, if you get them back at all.

Establishing those habits, or resurrecting them, involves being realistic with what you want to achieve. 

Write 200 words a day for a manuscript within a year

Maybe write a couple of hundred words a day, if you can manage it. (Two-hundred words a day would give you a book-length manuscript in a year.)

And now I can see that I’ve drifted significantly from the central theme, which is endings. I’ve done so because I realise the lateness of the hour. 

This column is going to end and there’s so much more I want to tell you before I go. 

I sense the conclusion looming and the word-count dwindling, and I’m experiencing an overwhelming urge to communicate something useful before I lapse into silence.

Writing is a personal choice. Once you get beyond formal education, no one’s telling you to write anymore. 

You choose to write to express something about yourself or to explore something you find interesting about the world. And the longer you stick with writing, the deeper your engagement with the practice will become.

Therein lies the true satisfaction of writing. At its best, it’s a process of learning and unlearning, of ending and beginning again. 

While it’s nice to see your name in print, what keeps you going is the fleeting joy of losing yourself in the work. You emerge from that state not knowing where the time has gone.

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