From the White Padded Room I think it was the monotony of my job that got to me. Hour after hour and day after day, I pushed the squeaky truck full of books and journals around the library. I put the books away and cleaned them and shifted them. I always had my hands on a dusty, crunchy book. My hands cracked and even bled on the bad days. With every book that fell with a loud clang on the gray metal shelves, a puff of dust floated in the air. Besides my cracked hands, my nose and eyes were always irritated and itchy. I loved to read, so I was excited to be working so closely with books. But soon enough, I couldn’t get the books out of my head.

A story may start and end in the same place and the main character’s name may be used to start and end a story as in… “The Un-numbing of Cory Willhouse” by Virginia Euwer Wolff Start: “Cory Willhouse’s eyelids flipped open before his thoughts had a chance to come to the surface in the predawn dark.” End: “Cory turned off the light…Cory Willhouse closed his eyes.”

The following writing sample is based on a character I have created in my writer’s notebook emulating the techniques to start and end a story of Virginia Euwer Wolff: Start: Randi Jenkins sat alone at her kitchen table, the smell of chocolate cake making her stomach rumble. Her pile of just-licked, chocolate-cake-covered toothpicks had grown to five by now. End: Randi stared at the blue plastic table cloth, the piles of napkins and plates and plastic forks; the silver “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” confetti; the box of melted vanilla ice cream; and the perfect three-tiered cake, covered in gooey fudge frosting and twenty unlit candles, Jack’s favorite. Jack’s surprise.