on endings...
It has occurred to me that all of the great writings of the world have an overarching fundamental flaw, they all have endings. While many would not see this as a problem, certainly quite the contrary, I find the idea that stories have endings wretched. Conflicts have resolutions, a particular set of circumstances may change, a period of time may come to pass, but characters never end. There is always an after thought, a sequel waiting to be written but, by the very nature of stories themselves, characters immortal. Now this argument may not seem to hold much water in situations where characters die within the confines of their story, but as the story of one person effects the lives of many others, the story can go on. There is always a 'What next?', time shall never cease to be, and it is impossible for one's actions to have no effect. Even settings live on, it is this very principle that allows the multitude of tourist traipsing through the downtown of Charleston to stare into White Point Gardens and imagine a time when the bandstand actually contained a brass band clothed in seersucker. When one thing goes another takes it's place and thus extends the story indefinitely. The 'What next?' is in fact the primary motivator for a great deal of writing, for instance the many supposed Jane Austen sequels and multitude of various pieces of fanfiction on the web. The world around us is obsessed with the future and, by shear dent of this, the past. Honestly, this rant has no ending but, I notice that I've used the word multitude twice and that my twenty minutes of daily writing is up.