“It is easier to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.” That’s how Joan Didion begins her essay, “Goodbye to All That.” She is referring to the beginnings and ends of relationships, specifically her love affair in the mid-1950s with the city of New York. But I think it’s also a wise statement about writing. It is easier – if the word easy can be used in relation to writing – to see the beginning of a story than it is to see the end. It is easier to know when and where to start than when and where to finish. And I think it is easier (okay, not easier exactly, perhaps just more possible) to write good beginnings than it is to craft good endings.

I’ve thought about this a lot (mostly during those long, tortuous hours when I am wrestling with how to end a piece), and I think I understand why.

First, it’s a matter of focus. All through the imagining, pondering, researching and organizing phases of a piece of writing – everything that happens before I sit down to write -- I am focused on how and where the story will begin. As I think and observe, read, listen and ask questions, I am constantly evaluating the material I’m getting for its potential as an opener. I want to know what that first sentence will be, that opening scene, that initial snippet of dialog, that quotable quote.

That’s probably because facing a blank screen is one of the most intimidating moments I encounter in my life as a writer. So, before I make myself comfortable in front of the computer, before I click on the “Microsoft Word” icon, I want to know what I will write.

Figuring out the beginning beforehand, crafting the sentence or scene in my head, comforts me. It momentarily quells the anxiety I feel when that blank page appears on the screen with that insistent, mean-spirited blinking cursor challenging me to start writing now. Knowing how a piece will begin fools me into thinking that I will know how to write the rest of the piece, and it is precisely that sense of confidence that allows me to go ahead and do so. I knew I would begin with Didion a week ago when I was thinking through this piece on my foggy morning run.

But do I know how I will end this piece? Not a clue. I haven’t given it a thought. That’s one good reason it will be harder to write the end once I get there.

There’s something else at work too, something purely mechanical that leads not necessarily to easier beginnings than endings but to better written beginnings: the writing process. When I’m writing a piece, I write in chunks. So let’s say on day one I write the initial 500 words. Day two, back at work, I read through those first 500 words (which includes, of course, the opener), and I rewrite, re-craft, polish. Then I go on to write another chunk, let’s say 750 words. Day three I begin by reading the 1250 words I’ve already written, including the now once-edited opener. I edit it again, then move through the piece and start writing the next chunk. And so it goes, with each day beginning by reworking and polishing the opener. At the end of the process – maybe a week to write a magazine piece, several weeks to write a book chapter – I will have burnished and refined the opening paragraphs five, six perhaps a dozen times.