A Good Ending

Learn where a personal essay delivers its gift.

- By William Kenower

I started writing personal essays more or less accidentally. I had (and still have) what began as a monthly column for the online magazine Author but soon tally. I had (and still have) what began as a monthly column for the online magazine Author but soon turned, despite my mild objections, into a daily column.

I didn't think I had enough to say about writing and publishing to fill 400 words, five days a week. And I was right! After only a month, I didn't want to pen another piece about query letters or agents or markets. So, I decided to tell a story.

While I had been telling fictional stories for years, I was not accustomed to personal narrative, at least not on the page. I told stories to my friends and family all the time, but this, I knew, would be different. Fortunately, Author was intended to be an uplifting magazine-we would publish no articles or interviews filled with any gloom and doom about the publishing world or how hard it is to write. Instead, we would always encourage.

That meant my story had to be uplifting, which helped serve as a guide, a definite target for my narrative arrow. However, I didn't appreciate until I reached the story's end, specifically the last paragraph and then the very last line, that whether the story left the reader feeling hopeful or indifferent or discouraged would be determined in these final words. What's more, when I finished it to my satisfaction, and as I pushed myself away from the desk, I noticed how peaceful and soothed I felt. It was an important lesson for a newly minted essayist: In writing it, I had left myself feeling how I hoped my readers would feel.