Yesterday I talked about NaNoWriMo and how I joined the July writing camp. Since I joined mid-July, I was a little behind on prompts. One of them said,
“write the end of your story, even if you haven’t gotten there yet.”
This made me think…how do I want my story to end? And do I want to share that yet? I know some of you are reading along with the story and it might ruin it to reveal the ending.
So maybe I will just brainstorm ways for it to end:
- the racial tension in the town comes to a head and minds are changed in small town Nebraska
- the racial tension comes to a head and nothing in town changes; Beth and Alec move back to the city
- Beth is saved from something by
- the principal listens to Beth, changes his ways and the community follows
- Beth gets her master’s degree and ends up being the principal and changes the social climate of the town (would be so satisfying…but is it realistic)
- the Gundersons do something terrible and one of the Mexican families saves the town (I need to name one of those families and introduce them…)
Okay, so I’m going to take one of those ideas and write an ending. This doesn’t mean it will be the real ending…but practice! And it will be fun.
Write the Ending:
Option: Beth gets her Master’s Degree and ends up being the principal.
Beth had finished her final class of her Master’s Program taken online through the University of Nebraska at Lincoln the previous month. The graduation ceremony was next weekend. Beth was thinking about what she wanted to wear–would she bring a sweater?– when Alec brought it up again–would she apply at the elementary school?
After [the incident] Mr. Busey “retired” recently and a stand-in was brought in from Lincoln. The local school board had frantically called a school in East Lincoln to borrow their vice principal since they didn’t have one of their own to take over. Budget cuts hadn’t allowed a second principal and Mr. Busey was happy to take the additional bonus each year for doing without.
Mrs. Rose was the temporary replacement and Beth was thrilled. Honestly, she thought Mrs. Rose was doing a fine job and Beth was so tired. It had been a long year.
She picked out a sweater and a little sparkly wristlet wallet she could carry. She normally took this to weddings, but this would work, too. Remembering back to her bachelor’s degree graduation in Omaha (oh Omaha), you didn’t really want to carry a big purse around.
These were the little things she was using to distract herself. From everything. She was grateful she had her graduation to look forward to. School would be over three weeks after that. And then she would have to figure it out.
Suddently her phone buzzed.
“Hello?” Beth answered. She rarely answered her phone for unknown numbers, but this one showed up as [Clearwater Public Schools].
“Hi, Beth. This is Superintendent Dr. Remington.”
Beth held her breath. What had he heard? As she tried to put her thoughts and explanations together, she heard Dr. Remington continue.
“Are you still there?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. I’m here. How are you?” Beth had only met him once before and she doubt he remembered her. There could only be one reason he was calling. But she thought it was all resolved…
“I would like to offer you a job.”
Okay writing that, I think I would need to put in the story that Beth had been working on her master’s degree, but I think it might work with some tweaking. What do you think? Scroll down and let me know!
Another note: my main characters don’t have last names! I should get on that.
PS I made a new page for all of story #1 characters for all of us to reference. 🙂
Here’s how I’m doing with my July writing goal: 3.3k out of 10k
