Committing fiction

My fiction output has been close to zero in recent years, for a variety of reasons writers will likely be familiar with, but I won't bore you with here. Suffice to say this week has been different. I've been writing. Fiction. Last night I completed the story. Yay, me.

That's not exactly the first draft, though. And it's not the final draft, either. The premise first came to me maybe 15 years ago, give or take. I wrote the first draft then, but I had no ending. I forced an ending, which was wholly unsatisfactory. I knew it, the select few who'd read the story knew it, but no obvious solution existed. So I moved on and the story sat. And sat. And sat.

Unexpectedly, unlooked-for, an ending popped into my head. Why do these things happen? I have no idea. I realized that certain constraints I'd placed on myself with one of the main characters served no purporse and hindered the story. So I dropped those constraints. The story suddenly worked. The ending fulfilled the promise of everything leading up to it. That's not to say the writing process went smoothly--it took a full week to force out a couple thousand words. My writing speed continues to slow as I age. This is a story that mixes genres (that I rarely write in, no less) and has no obvious market, so I've got that going for me. But as a story, it is close to being the best version of itself it can possibly be. Another pass to clean up some messy spots and add some retrofitting and it'll be done. Will this lead to regular writing output from me again? No telling. I thought the same last year when I mamaged a couple of novel chapeters around this time but the radio silence since then proves nothing is guaranteed.

Here's a taste of the new prose a few pages before the finale:

The doorknob rattled. Eyes wide, J.T. grabbed it with both hands, bracing his shoulder against the door frame.

The door shook. Boyd screamed. The knob twisted in J.T.'s grip but he would not let it go. Porcelain shattered, followed by what disturbingly sounded like a flock of geese being sucked into a jet engine. The angry knob twisted harder, peeling skin from J.T.'s palms, but he refused to relent. The entire house shuddered, struck by a menace so cold J.T.'s tongue froze to the roof of his mouth.

And then... silence.

J.T. blinked bits of hoarfrost from his eyelids. Frost covered his arms, the door, the walls. Warily, he released his grip on the doorknob. Nothing happened.

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