Endings are New Beginnings

New Year’s Day became a day of sorting out what to accomplish in the upcoming year. A recurring theme began to emerge as I mulled over my list—finishing projects. Among them, Ule the Unfurled, is of utmost priority.

It’s easy to set up story threads and fun to start weaving them together mid-way in a story, but the difficult part is the tying of those threads, making sure they’re all nicely knotted with coherent meaning in the end.

Working on that cohesion now will only create a tighter focus while revising, and that’s a good thing. Although it’s taking me longer to finish writing the latter part of the first draft of Ule the Unfurled, the work I’m doing now won’t have to be done later during revision… hopefully!

A 3-week break from Ule and the computer during the winter solstice festivities created some distance from the project. When I returned to the plot notes for the ending, the few remaining bits of ideas, events and actions floating around in my notes suddenly fell into place.

The scene outlines are still messy, but they are now pulled into 15 very full sections to write—about another 27,000 words—which results in a new word count goal for the first draft. Originally I was aiming for about 80,000 words, and 90,000 for the revised novel. Now, it is 85,000 words for the first draft yet still 90,000 for the revised novel.

Ule still cannot remember who she is, and events planned for after she regained her memory are happening before she gains any insight into her past. It makes what she does more pertinent–whether you can remember your name or anything of your past, there is still something deep down in our inner core where we act and react in accordance with our true selves despite the constructs of the world around us.

It’s important she acts upon those natural instincts, learns to trust them without the influence of her past—it’s almost like she needs to throw away her crutches or training wheels or maybe both to learn what it’s like to stand on her own two feet without even the world beneath them. (I know, it’s hard to stand without a ground, but the idea here is that her foundation is within herself and not reliant on the external.)

While Ule still “unfurls”—that is awakens, opens up to her true self—she must also eventually awaken to her past so that she can gauge how far she has come, how much she has changed since she has come to the world. With the return of her memory, this marks the beginning of the very end of the novel, as well as the end of who she used to be and the beginning of a new way of being for her.

Hence, endings are new beginnings and with the New Year I intend to begin working again on the ending of Ule the Unfurled.

If you would like to read the first draft of Ule the Unfurled upon it’s completion, please click here.