Last month, I wrote a guest blog for author Jessica Bell’s weekly The Author Unleashed series, in which I discussed some of the reasons I’ve recently decided to finish my M.A. in Fiction. Since writing that post, I’ve realized that aside from the reasons I listed there, I neglected to include one of the most important purposes for embarking upon any course of higher education: It’s not only to learn about your subject matter; it’s also to learn about yourself.

Well, I’ve been back in class for about a month now, and lo, and behold, I’ve already learned something completely surprising about myself: I am, apparently, a closure addict.

I’m not alone in this disorder; in fact, one of the earliest victims I remember encountering was Roger Rabbit. “Shave and a haircut, two…” (Go ahead, I dare you, resist finishing that in your head.) At that time, however, I saw no similarities between the two of us and I ascribed his difficulties to the fact that he was a Toon.

 

It’s not only Toons who love closure, however: Recently, The Big Bang Theory spent nearly a full episode detailing Sheldon Cooper’s struggles with the problem. Oh, how I sympathized with Sheldon’s need to make that Jack-in-the-Box pop (we even had the exact same one for our kids when they were little). The unfinished Tic-Tac-Toe game, the prematurely cancelled television show—I truly felt his pain, but again, any similarities between us were, of course, merely coincidental and could be chalked up to the fact that Sheldon Cooper is a crazy television character.

 

No, I never really thought that I had a problem with closure, until this month when I read the short story “What Feels Like the World,” by Richard Bausch, for homework. [WARNING: SPOILER ALERT]. All through the story, I rooted for the character Brenda to reach her goal. I struggled with her, I somersaulted with her, I dieted with her, I agonized with her and her grandfather, and just when her moment arrived—her big moment, the ultimate event Bausch had been building us up to with his every paragraph, the Holy-freaking-Grail of moments in this tiny, little story—that’s when that sadist Bausch decided to end his story, right there, with no resolution, no closure, no answers. Needless to say, that’s when all hell broke loose.

 

Fire rained down from the heavens. Fault lines heaved open. Killer tsunamis roared destruction along every coast. Women and children wept.

 

Okay, I’m exaggerating a teeny bit. But boy, I was pissed. I can’t remember the last time I read an ending that left me feeling so angry, so abandoned, so betrayed, so bereft. How dare he leave me hanging like that, without knowing what happened to Brenda? I griped about it on our class discussion board. I whined about it to my kids (who yawned and changed the TV channel). I fantasized about finding Bausch and forcing him to “finish” the story. I wrote alternate endings in my head, ending them all with “Harumph. That’s how you should’ve ended it, you tosser.” I’m even still blogging about it now, a week later.

Why?

 

Well, the answer to that is what I was saying earlier, that I’m already learning valuable things about myself in this class (which is why I’m going to school in the first place) and one is this: I am, apparently, as addicted to closure as any Sheldon Cooper or Roger Rabbit, and it’s the short writings I’ve been doing for class that have proved it to me beyond a shadow of a doubt.

 

Oh, I’ve read a few short stories in my life—you can’t get out of any high school lit class without them. But it was never my favorite form. I think it’s because normally, I read so fast that the escape I seek from reading doesn’t last long enough (or take me far enough away) with a short story; I can get so much farther reading a novel.

 

So when everyone tells me (as they tell most other writers) to write what I love, naturally, I started with novels. That’s not to say I haven’t written any short stories; I have: One took second place in a writing competition in my online writers’ group—I think I mentioned that in this blog when it happened. Just last month, I learned that the next book in the Open to Interpretation series, Love + Lust, will include my short story “The Navigator,” to be published this summer. I can write short stories; I just didn’t realize, until this class, that I like to.

In just these few weeks, I’ve already cranked out four stories. Four! In a month! How is this possible? Well, all I know is that an idea pops into my head—in class, from homework, from a writing prompt, even from a classmate’s first line as part of an exercise—and wham-o!—out pops a story.

 

It’s so different from the years-long processes I’ve endured while writing my novels (partly, I think, because I also suffer from HFD—High Frequency of Distractions. It’s different than ADD or ADHD, because my lack of focus is due to external distractions: kids, dogs, phone calls, appointments, etc. No pill can cure that). Completing something good, even if it’s short, has been a delight, each and every time it’s happened. Now, a mere month in, I feel I’m a goner in the truest sense of the word.

 

My writing teacher keeps asking for “scenes” or “segments,” but my brain resists and cranks out a complete story each time. As part of a class exercise, she just asked for a description of a woman, a room, a place; I wrote a first draft of a story. She asked for a first line from each student in class; mine arrived with a full story attached. (Imagine how peeved I was when she told us the assignment was to use someone else’s first line. But even that was okay, because I already had stories for all of those lines, too.)

I don’t know if these stories are any good, but once they grab hold of my mind, I’m helpless before the compulsion to write to completion. I simply can’t stop, so I can only conclude that I must be a closure addict. I’m assuming my condition has gone undiagnosed to this point because until now, I’ve spent my time slogging through novels, spreading out my closure fixes far enough that I didn’t have a chance to get hooked on those multiple Endgasms writers love so much.

So there, I’ve said it. Now I’m out in the open about my problem, which, as everyone knows, is the first step towards getting help (though just what form that help might take, I have no clue).

And to think, if I’d not gone back to school, I might never have known I had a problem (of course, one could also argue that it was this class that, with its weekly short writing exercises, has, in fact, served as my gateway drug…)

 

Will I stop working on my novels? Ha. Clearly, you don’t understand the concept of closure addiction. I have to finish them. But I will definitely be making time for a little short story closure action on the side.  And if you’re very good, I might even share some of it with you.