The end of Plead/Cleave

My 57,444-word YA romantic adventure novel Plead (which I wrote in high school) evolved over the past few months into the just-finished 45,760- word semiromantic novella Cleave. (What an adjective string!) I wrote the ending last night, and this afternoon I cleaned it all up: standardized the chapter titles, gave all of the chapters epigraphs from Three Sisters, and brought all the text up to date with my latest version. As always, the biggest problem with the whole story is that, even with all the cutbacks I made, it would never really happen.

The ending is no cop-out, for everything I could have written between chapter 24 and the epilogue/foreshadowing prologue has already been written a thousand times. Readers can easily fill in the three-month blank, so it would be silly for me to write something so clichéd.

Mostly, I am proud of myself for finally getting this inane story out of my system. I am also proud of myself for deleting so much, leaving things about the characters out because they weren't important. I used to think that everything I ever invented had to go into the story, but I've gotten over that.