Make the ending the beginning

Hello to all!

Everyone starts to write a book at the beginning, right? I mean, where else would you really start the damned thing? Well, apparently, this isn't the case at all. Some research I have been doing actually showed me that some pretty good writers reverse that trend entirely and start at the END.

What? What rubbish! How can you write the end when you haven't a clue where you started from? Yes, a very good question indeed. I did the same, thought these people, success ignored, nuts. But, like a grain of sand in my shoe, the statement irritated me until I took a good look at it. I even wrote an end paragraph of my own and sat staring at it for a while.
This was it:
" Laura brushed tears away from her eyes. Through the blur she saw Andrew just standing there, smiling. For a long moment, neither of them moved, then as one, they hurled themselves into each other's arms."

Now, let me tell you: I am NOT a romance writer. I can tell you that with perfect confidence, seeing as nearly all my so-called romantic writing has turned into something else entirely by the first 10 or so pages, or has died miserably on the computer screen. Romance is just not me. ( Readers of some of my work would qualify that a bit more, I think!) So, although that paragraph is good for a romance, someone else could build it from there; just not me.

Admittedly, it's only a small paragraph. But WHY has Laura been crying? What has Andrew done to be able to just stand there, a smile on his face?  The interesting part is HOW I can shape the story to come to that point. Laura might have had and solved a crisis in her happy life; she may have solved a mystery that has puzzled her all her life; she may have found Andrew after a series of bad decisions; there are innumerable ways to do it. And, because I freak out every time I come anywhere near writing a romance, you can bet I'd make it probably a short story about something valuable she has thought lost forever and has just found again.

Back to my hopeless attempts at writing romance: Bored out of my gourd many years ago, and trying to study for University, I decided to write a Mills&Boon romance as a brain-break. It was terrible; even I thought so. My oldest sister, whom I was staying with in breaks before exams, read it and asked me, very seriously: Ahh, love, I think I know where you are going, but WHERE is the romance and between WHOM? Enough said; this woman was/is a connoisseur of Mills&Boon. In those days, she had a full room devoted to those types of books.

So why NOT start at the end and work your way backwards? If it works for others, it may work for you. :)