Begin at the End

Was it Stephen Covey who first said "Begin with the end in mind?" Probably not -- he said it, but surely this advice comes from long before Covey's repackaging. And certainly it'll be repackaged again and again. Most recently, perhaps, by novelist John Irving.

Irving says he never begins writing a novel until he has decided on the end.

"I always start with the last sentence," he says. "I know exactly where I'm going. I have a far more fixed sense of the ending than the beginning. In the five, six, seven years it takes me to write a book, I always know the ending first and don't start writing until I know the last sentence. You need to know the ending to understand the tone and language to use. You need to know how to set everything up to get to where you're going."

When did Irving discover this method? Read Writeful next week as Irving elaborates.