134. The Last Page – Jonathan Miles

I’ve never written a novel or story without first knowing the ending.

I’ve never written a novel or story without first knowing the ending. This seems to be an uncommon method, at least among writers of my acquaintance, but not unheard-of. I think it was the novelist Richard Russo who likened his writing process to throwing a pebble into a pond—the pebble being the ending—and then swimming around to find it. One of my heroes, Katherine Anne Porter, always wrote her last page first and then worked towards it. “I know where I’m going,” she once told an interviewer. “How I get there is God’s grace.”

– Jonathan Miles

Prompt:
Write the ending to your story. By this I don’t mean your physical end, your deathbed scene, no—that’s creepy. Rather, try to imagine the moment at which the plot threads of your life are tied together, when the arc of your story resolves. Where will you be and who will be with you? What dreams will you have realized? What mysteries might you finally have solved? What will you deem your greatest achievements? And what do you fear might still be left undone or unsaid (because, remember, all great endings are slightly ambiguous)? Write the last page of your story, the pebble in the pond silt. And then after, with God’s grace, start swimming.

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