In the Beginning Was the End

Raymond Carver’s advice was to “get in, get out.” But how? We’ll explore how to start stories and novels — as well as, to a lesser extent, poems and creative nonfiction — and how to finish them. While we aren’t going to ignore what’s in the middle, we will primarily be preoccupied with openings and closings and the question of whether or not the end of a creative work has to be present in the beginning.