endings.

It keeps me up at night. My mind is always wandering. At any given moment I’m composing my thoughts into chapters or categories. I have scraps of paper and napkins and journal pages where I’ve written down book ideas, characters, titles and outlines. There are about a half a dozen half-written essays on flash drives or yellow legal pads. But I don’t know how to finish them. I have a mess of half-developed creativity. I’m not sure what to do with it. Sometimes I think I should just put them all together, like that would somehow give closure to the whole thing. Sometimes I wonder if I just write everything out that’s in my head it would clear the way to endings. Like all those beginnings are somehow keeping me from the rest. Irving wrote that writers “love endings.” Could it be that I’m just afraid to let things end? Maybe it’s that things don’t always so neatly tie themselves up. Either way, it seems to me that if I’m ever to properly publish anything I’ve got to conclude things. Maybe I’m destined to have a trove of half-finished essays and reflections written on the backs of envelopes and on constant loop inside my head. At night, when everything is still I close my eyes and go over everything, just as if I were writing it down. I move paragraphs; I interject sentences or subtract commas. The whole process done right there while I drift off to sleep. Sometimes, if I think I may lose it, I’ll roll over and scratch it all out on the inside of a book flap or a discarded clothing tag I find under the bed. But mostly I watch the words as they float above me. I watch them move and fall into place. I just wish I could do that on paper. I just wish I could get some sleep.