Am I Done?

I have a script on my hard drive that I just finished: 118 pages.  I haven't written FADE OUT yet or END OF PLAY.  I arrived at a place that seems like an ending.  But it doesn't feel finished.  It actually feels like I might have overshot the ending.  It might have ended the scene before.  Oh, I don't know.

It's hard when you finish something.  Or rather, it's hard to finish something.  I find beginnings the easiest and endings the hardest.  I don't know if that seems like obvious logic.  There are some writers who feel like you need to know the end before you start.  I don't think I buy into that.  

I don't like having no idea as to the shape of the piece before I start.  That's only because I like playing around with structure.  Or with the idea of structure.  I have a new play I'm working on (and probably will be working on over a long period of time) that has no plot.  That doesn't mean it has no structure.  But it's a bit more of a collage.  The meaning of the piece is derived from the proximity of the scenes to each other.  I'm not plotting things out.  But for me that's still different than writing in free fall.  I'm writing knowing that I'm placing certain scenes next to each other and there is a desired effect.  But it's not plot driven.  The idea is that there is no plot whatsoever.  That doesn't mean that there isn't a theme or an arc.  It just means that I don't feel like I have to go from A to B to C. But in order to do that, I feel like this piece needs to be incredibly thought out and laid out like tiles in a mosaic.  You have these bits that add up to a collective picture once you put them next to each other.  But each of the pieces on its own gives no indication of how that's going to happen.

But back to this play.  It has a clear structure. It's happening in reverse time.  We start from the end and go back to the beginning.  So in a way, the end that's so hard for me is actually the beginning.  So this shouldn't be hard?  Right?  No?

But what I have to do after I finish is go back through and start linking things together.  When I started I didn't know all of the details of the whole story.  I wrote it in reverse chronology.  I didn't write it start to finish and then reverse it.  

So I'm going to give myself a day or two to just think about things and to let my mind settle.  I don't have to have this figured out until Friday night.

I'm grateful for having gotten to the end.

I'm grateful that I have to viable options for what this end should be.

I'm grateful to be writing.

I'm grateful that I get to hear it out loud this weekend.

I'm grateful that I have a group of writers to share this with and that they will be sharing with me the fruits of their labor.

I'm grateful that I know when to step back and give myself room to breathe.