Lately I’ve been trying to wrap up a story—without success—and every time I take another run at it, I think of something I read recently about endings, that good ones “shine a point of light on the writer’s best attempt at truth.”
I love that, because it’s how I envision endings. You direct a shiny, narrow beam of light, or aim a long, sturdy arrow, at a pinpoint of a target. Summations, surprise twists, sudden epiphanies—these are not arrows or beams of light. Their scopes are too wide. Continue reading “On Endings”
Let’s start with an exercise I stole from Alexander Chee, who stole it from Annie Dillard, who stole it from Samuel Johnson.
When an artist or inventor creates something truly original, we tend to envision it as a thunderbolt, a flash of genius striking from above. Imagine Picasso painting La Demoiselles D’Avignon, the first Cubist work, with its startling multiple angles and unprecedented gorgeous weirdness. How did that happen?