He wants to write his own happy ending
And I hate to break it to him, but he can’t.
Lord knows I’ve fallen into that trap before.
The story’s awful when you think that way.
Plenty of writers have said it in one way or another:
You’ve got to kill your Darlings.
Be a sadist...Make awful things happen to them.
That we’ve got to suffer somehow.
And that’s because that’s how it is to be alive.
He would like if it all serendipitously fell into place,
And wouldn’t we all—for us and our loved ones—
But that’s not how it works out for any of us.
Not even between the covers of a book
Or a manuscript or a poem or a pamphlet.
We can’t escape the central tragedy of life.
Which is so beautifully mirrored in literature:
To be born is to die. It isn’t fair.
But to be content is not to care.
