To begin with the end in mind or not to?

While grammatically incorrect to the "nth" degree, and an obvious rip off from two separate pieces of literature, the question is valid nonetheless. To be fair, let's not call "7 Habits" literature on the same par as the Bard himself.

Covey tells us in one of the most-read self-help books of all-time that we should begin with the end in mind. Always. There are writers who tell us this restricts us too much in our  creativity because it keeps our story too contained.

So, who is right? Neither. Both.

Everyone has seen me say it time and time again, there are no rules for what YOU do when YOU write. It is your work and no one else. Agents. Publishers. They don't stick to hard and fast rules and we know for a fact that there are millions of readers who could give two flying fucks whether a writer followed some hard set rule. Fifty million shades of improper writing anyone?

The truth is that there have been some endings that came to me and inspired the rest of the story and there have been some stories that inspired the ending because the beginning is what came to mind.

In my first novel, the entire concept evolved from a simple setnence:

In the middle of nothing is everything.

 I wanted to write a book that made this true. So I worked around that concept. I needed to build outward and develop a story. When I first started writing it, I had an entirely different ending in mind. About midway through the book, I had decided that the protagonist was going to marry a woman named Casey Jennings. She was to be a young woman who came from a poor background and made the protagonist feel normal. But that seemed to be too cliche and too easy. So instead I had her be a person who shows him just how awful he had been by being a worse person after they married.

I then came up with a new concept; it was supposed to be some sappy ending. But I trashed that because it was too 'Nicholas Sparks' for me... then, one night as I was laying down to sleep at about one o'clock in the morning, a sentence hit me; and that sentence grew into a full page. It was an ending I had not expected the character to take, and yet it was the only ending that could have happened.

I actually think that in most cases, there needs to be an outcome known ahead of time so that the story can wind properly to its end. If you have no clue where a story is going and simply write, you might end up writing a 900 page behemoth of a manuscript. And, while there might be a market for that, it is quite limited.

On my current project, I have already changed the title (in my head, anyway) and I have already changed direction, but I came up with an ending that I think is so freaking perfect that I cannot help but keep the final sentence.

"How about some fried chicken."

That's it - the end of the book. The main character is responding to a new girl in his life when she asks what they should have for dinner. Everything in the book will tie into that sentence. That doesn't mean that all they do is talk about fried chicken, but you'll have to read the book to understand; and it will be one of those things where you can look at that and I will not have to tell you anything more. You will read it and take what you want from it and leave the pages feeling as if you have been fulfilled.

An artist should never feel constrained by rules. It is why we are artists. We craft our words in ways that we hope others will enjoy. Sometimes they do and sometimes they do not, and that is the beauty of art.

Should you begin with the end in mind? Or not? It doesn't matter what I tell you to do, write. Feel. Tell a story. At the end of the day, whether you had the end in mind or not, you will get where you want to go with a story only by being true to yourself.