Many if not all of you have probably read this already, but if you haven't, here is an excerpt from Shonda Rhimes' official blog about the Grey's Anatomy season finale.

Here's just a portion of what the show's creator and executive producer had to say about the gripping, two-hour episode and what it was like to construct it on her end.

A link to the unabridged version appears at the bottom ...

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When I pitched this Grey's Anatomy finale at the beginning of Season Six (those of you who know me know that I pitch the end of the season first and we work towards it), when I pitched a gunman shooting up the hospital, it seemed fine. Really it did.

Then 20 or so episodes later, I started to write it and it did not seem fine. It did not seem fine at all. On an almost daily basis, I would come into work and throw myself down on the sofa in the middle of the office and burst into tears like a ... well, like a bitch baby.

And I would tell the other Grey’s Anatomy writers, “I don’t think I can do this. It’s too horrible. People are getting hurt. That man is shooting them.” Buckets of bitch baby tears.

Tony and Hammer and Pete and everyone on the staff would murmur encouraging things.

My assistant Miguel would say, “You can do it! It’s going to be great!” in that cheerful Miguel way. And so I would suck up the bitch baby tears and keep writing.

But here’s the thing. It hurt to write this finale.

It literally hurt me. Because in order to write these episodes, I had to walk in the shoes of Gary Clark. I had to think like a shooter. A person who would shoot Reed and Alex and Charles. A person who would shoot Derek. By the time I finished writing part one, I was sick.

And depressed.

My McDreamy – I think you all will forgive me for believing he is more mine than anyone else’s because c’mon, I wrote my dream guy saying my dream things which is the reason I am single and the reason he is mine – my McDreamy was lying on my beloved catwalk dying.

Mer is screaming and he is dying. And, before you have me shot up with Thorazine and placed in a strait jacket, yes, I DO I know it’s a only TV show, I’m not insane, but dude ... it felt too real.

It felt WAY too real. And here’s the thing you need to know:

In my first draft of Part 1, Gary Clark shot Bailey. Bailey. He shot her. I wrote it and then I couldn’t sleep, for days and days, I could not sleep and I had to remove it from the script. Bailey getting shot was just too much for me. She’s our anchor. She’s the soul.

Mer is the heart but Bailey is the soul and so I had to delete it. Because there was no way I could go on if Bailey had a bullet wound. The world would just be too broken. Derek was devastating enough but both Derek and Bailey ... it meant I couldn’t go on.

And then I got to Part 2. I had shattered a world and now I needed to put it back together.

Click here to continue reading Shonda's blog ...

Steve Marsi is the Managing Editor of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Google+ or email him here.