In Which Some Endings are Happier Than Others

All that fretting and worrying for nothing -- I heard from the editor in question shortly after I posted the last update.  Things seem to be working positively.

So, now all I have to do is finish up The Scene That Refuses To Be Written, get my protagonist through the aftermath of that, then set up the Big Obstacle.  Once the Big Obstacle arrives, I'll be closing in on the ending, which will be the Big Decision and the Happy Ever After, since I've decided that, yes, I will go with the happy ending.

That's an actual choice, you know.  I could write the whole thing and have my protagonist return to her well worn rut to repeat the mistakes she's made or, worse, to live in bitterness over having given up what she wants for the sake of Others.  Oh yes, I could have an Unhappy Ending.  I could also have an Ambiguous Ending -- very lit fic -- and much more the way life seems to work out most of the time.  But I decided a while back that this story is, at the heart of things, a Romance.  That is, it is a story constructed along a certain line, with particular rules.  One of those rules is some kind of Happy Ending.  Now, endings come in various levels of Happiness, from Total Happiness to Happiness with Shadows on it. 

It's a big deal, picking out the ending one can live with in a story.  A completely happy ending does not come naturally to me (big surprise, I'm sure).  And a happy ending has to be earned, so it has to be proportionate to what the protagonist suffers, survives, overcomes, and learns.  A completely happy ending dropping on the head of an undeserving protagonist tips the whole story out of balance.  I'm not saying those stories don't end up in print, but they aren't the sort to please me.  I also don't much care for extremes of suffering in order to make a protagonist deserving.  People do suffer, sometimes suffer greatly over things that seem small (I'm an excellent example of that) but there are parameters, balances to be maintained.  An ending doesn't have to detail everything, but it does have to be tidy.  It also has to fulfill the contract made with the reader at the beginning.

I keep searching my first chapter to me sure I'm very clear on what I'm promising at the end.  And what I'm promising is some level of Happy Ending.  The person telling this story has to be telling it from a position of relative happiness, of having what she wants (more or less).  Nothing is perfect, but nothing has to be.

Now if I could just get it written.