London, Sydney, or Tokyo? As we stood by this directional sign on a small island in the middle of the South Pacific, my husband and I chose Sydney, by way of Noumea, as we were sailing. But we did not wait until we were in Apia, the capital of Samoa (formerly known as Western Samoa), to decide on our final destination. We had spent months planning this voyage across the South Pacific before we ever left Mexico, and so, even though our plans were of the type that welcomes deviation, we knew that we would generally head in a southwesterly direction and that we expected to wind up in Australia.

This is how I like to write fiction. No matter what sparks my interest in writing the story or where, if anywhere, on the plotline that spark might land, I find a beginning point from which to spin the tale and know, usually before I begin writing it, just how it will end. In fact, I find that knowing the ending before writing the story is even more important than knowing the beginning. You can always go back and find, or add, the beginning, but it is difficult to write a story if you don’t know where it is going.

When my husband, Jim, and I decided to buy a boat and sail across the Pacific, we did not know whether we would be starting out on the voyage from California, Mexico, or perhaps Panama, but we knew what ocean (Pacific) and what main part of that ocean (South Pacific) we wanted to cross and where (Australia) we wanted to end the journey. This meant that we would want to begin the voyage from the west coast of Southern California, Mexico, or Central America and that we could plan what islands we might want to visit, beginning with those in French Polynesia, no matter the specific location of our jumping off point.

The middle of the journey would work itself out, with many variations possible within the general geographic area through which we would be traveling, because all those possible way points lay between our starting point and our final destination. Our plans for the middle of the trip could be determined or revised at will as long as we did not veer too far off the route to Australia. In other words, we would probably need to stop in Fiji, but whether to sail into Vanuatu was entirely up to us, the wind, and the weather. Vanuatu could be considered a minor plot point, one we could easily do without, whereas Fiji was an important one for the story and Sydney, of course, the climax.

Think of it this way: You can fiddle with the middle, but it’s hard to bend the end.

Oahu is a beautiful island, but one would hardly consider it en route from San Diego to Sydney. If your final destination for this journey is Australia, then save Hawaii for another voyage. You can always write another book.

© 2016 Ann Henry, all rights reserved.

Photo: Choose a Destination © 2016 Ann Henry, all rights reserved.