June 2008 (cont.)

It isn’t that I start out not knowing where I am going. I always have the ending in mind—especially its emotional core—before I write the first line. In fact, I can’t write the first line without knowing the ending. I may not have sorted out the muddle of the middle, as one of my students referred to the long slog between beginning and end, but I always know my destination.

What I don’t know, what I can’t know until I have written my way there, is exactly how the ending will feel. Or rather, I’ll know what feeling I’m aiming for, but I won’t know how that final feeling will click into place.

The story I have just finished is a small novel, what in the industry is referred to as a chapter book. I prefer the term novella. It’s for Stepping Stones, Random House. Not a ghost story this time, as my other Stepping Stones novellas have been, but a fantasy called The Very Little Princess. A small fantasy about a very small doll that comes to life.

However small the story, though, the novella has taken a long time to write. But then this past year has taken a long time to live.