Why endings are sometimes not as well written as beginnings

This may be pure and utter B.S., so feel free to disregard.

While I was in the shower this morning, where I do some of my best thinking, I developed a theory that the reason why story endings are sometimes a disappointment to readers is that they may not be as well edited as the beginnings and middles.

Stick with me, here. I do think this makes sense!

Case in point: the story I’m working on now is about 6500 words long, and I’ve been writing it for a week. Finished the first draft yesterday. I didn’t know the complete story when I started, uncovering it a bit at time as I went along. At certain points, I printed the manuscript out and went back over what I’d written so far, editing, changing, revising. I probably did three or four big revision passes (including the one that got lost–see earlier journal entry) before I got to the ending. I wrote the final 900 words yesterday morning.

So, parts of the first 5400 words have been revised and rewritten as many as four times already. No matter how many times I go over the manuscript from this point on, the first quarter, half, three-quarters, will always have had that editorial head start.

Oh, never mind. Maybe it doesn’t make any sense after all. I said I do some of my best thinking in the shower; not all of it.

I received the page proofs for the Cemetery Dance limited edition of The Road to the Dark Tower today, so I’ll be spending the next several days pouring over them with a fine-toothed comb, making comparisons to the trade edition and taking the opportunity to correct some of the goof-ups I made that have been so graciously conveyed to me by eagle-eyed readers thus far. This isn’t going to be as easy a task as signing 1000 limitation pages, that’s for sure.

The Road to the Dark Tower made Locus magazine’s 2004 Recommended Reading List, which will appear in the February 2005 issue and is on the web site.