What if?

You know what I love best about beginning a new project? The first sentence. I love coming up with a 'hook' that will draw the reader into the story, but I also love it for another reason: all of the possibilities it invokes. It draws me into the story.

Consider this first line: "You're fired."

What a great beginning! I know, I know--it sounds more like an ending, but the fun part is taking an ending and asking, "Who's fired? Why? And where does she go from there? What does this mean for the character? Is she struggling to make ends meet to begin with? Does she have someone depending on her for their financial well-being? A child? An elderly parent? Will she have to move? How will that affect her relationships? Will she have to leave her hometown--or return to her home town? And who or what will she encounter there? What if she's burned bridges? What if it's really the last place she wants to be?"

An ending is really a beginning, a place where one door closes and others are flung wide open.

I think about my students' first drafts, for example, and how they work through that first effort of "thinking through writing" about a specific topic. Over my years of teaching, I've noticed that it's usually in the conclusion of that first draft that they really discover what it is that they have to say, that the conclusion is really an introduction--a thesis--for their second draft.

I occasionally begin a new project with a character in mind, but most often, it's with a hook--with a single sentence that drags me into the story and forces me to explore who, what, when, where, and how...and most importantly: "What if?"

I think that life is the same way. We often fret and mourn our endings--which is completely natural and good; after all, we're leaving something behind, letting go--but we rarely realize the fact that endings are also, in essence, new beginnings. It isn't the end of the story, but the beginning of a new chapter in our lives.

When I finished my M.A., for example, I felt a little lost. For the first time in fifteen years, I wasn't registering for classes, wasn't compelled to write papers on a topic I was only vaguely interested in, didn't have deadlines looming over my head. I missed the intellectual engagement in the classroom, missed writing papers on topics I was only vaguely interested in, and missed those deadlines. School had become my comfort zone, and it was frightening to walk away.

When we come to an ending in our lives, we're forced out of our comfort zones. We're like a five-year-old on the first day of school--or an 18-year-old on graduation day: feeling overwhelmed, excited, sad, and incredibly overstimulated, all at the same time. And this is when we grow. When we're locked into our routines, into the known, safely in the confines of our comfort zones, we don't learn anything new about ourselves.

Endings in and of themselves help us to grow; they force us to see ourselves in new ways, to let go of something familiar, perhaps even loved, and we must mourn its passing. Sometimes we struggle against it; sometimes we rage. Sometimes, we're heart-broken. But once we go through the healing process, once we come out the other side, we realize that we face a new beginning, something to build on, a place full of possibilities, and an opportunity to ask, "What if?"