When first coming across this essay, I thought to myself, I don't have a problem with this. I'm great at writing endings. Then as I went through the essay and looked at the good and bad endings I realized that I fall more into the bad endings than the good ones. And the few good ones I do fall into I fall into what messes it up. The one that I do a lot because I always thought I was witty and smart and wanted the reader to see my message was the "Overly Symbolic Ending". I love the way she describes authors who do this, "It isn't uncommon for an author, anxious about his woefully unsatisfied ending, to attempt to seduce readers by getting them drunk on poetics, overripe similes and metaphors, and low-hanging fruit of symbolism, in hopes that some uber-image will emerge to which the reader to which the reader can attach profound meaning." Once I read that, I vocally stated in my room "Dammit!" Because it's true!
I feel like with all these endings she gives don't necessarily matter. You can categorize and label the different goods and bads of endings but to put it bluntly, "Endings are a bitch" and they always will be. You should do what you want with your ending but the important part is that it isn't forced, it isn't bland, and it isn't just something you wrote just to have an ending.
Yes!
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