The ending

I have an outline for the climax. It's percolating. Meanwhile, I suddenly saw the ending, jumped ahead and hammered it like iron, totally right, a done deal. The last piece of the puzzle remaining now is the ten-page climax. That will take time. Wish me luck with it. Heroes and novelists have to get lucky.

There are five scenes in the climax, diagrammed below. I am very close to beginning to write it, and it's intimidating, grisly work that frightens me. The thin black curve is Kyle's clarity, his psycho-epistemological status. It's always a struggle to obtain full focus, requisite in battle if you want to survive. Kyle has a lot to survive for.

The ending is so intensely sad that it has disabled me with sorrow. It might be many days before I can go back to work, backspace and ride the 10-page climax, an ugly rollercoaster at the gates of hell.