When Is a Story Finished?
Clare Sestanovich on Katherine Dunn's "Process" and our obsession with endings
How do you know when a story is finished?
I’m asked this all the time. By students, by readers, by other writers who can’t seem to complete—or relinquish, or escape—some stubborn draft. It’s a reasonable enough question, but for a while I was surprised by it. Isn’t starting to write the hard part? Then, this summer, I read “Process,” a short story by Katherine Dunn, published this week on our website. In just half a dozen pages, Dunn’s story managed to tell me something new about the mystery and, yes, the misery of creativity. (About the misery, I was quite sure I knew it all.) Here is Dunn’s protagonist, Joseph Jaikins, a “dutiful” employee at a paint manufacturer who has, for the first time, tried painting himself:
Joseph himself thought it was a strange thing to do. It seemed presumptuous and, in some way he could not quite name, extremely risky. A queer vibration took over his chest, a continuous wave that traveled from his breastbone to his spine and back. Occasionally he could feel it expanding to fill him from armpit to armpit. The excitement frightened him at first. He imagined it was a sensation that would come to him when was dying.
This is the moment in which Joseph the artist is born—and yet what it evokes most strongly for him is death. As you’ll see for yourself when you read the rest of the story, this contradiction consumes Joseph’s life. If you think you’ve been tortured by the question of whether your work of art is finished, trust me—Joseph has you beat.
Poor Joseph, but lucky us. This vivid, visceral passage helps me understand that our obsession with endings is wrapped up with our confusion about beginnings—that the knife’s edge between creative acts and destructive drives is the uncomfortable place where so much brilliant art gets made.
And Katherine Dunn’s career has something else to tell us about beginnings and endings. She died in 2016, but in the past few years her work has been enjoying a revival; with the posthumous publication and republication of her work, long-time fans of her cult classic, Geek Love, have been joined by new, devoted readers. We hope you’ll read “Process” and become a part of the “continuous wave” of Dunn’s genius.
And if you decide to take the “risky” step of starting (or finishing) a story of your own, here's a prompt: try inventing a character with a secret project or a secret talent. Maybe, like Joseph, they have a canvas hidden in their attic. Or maybe, like a certain famous inventor of literature, it's more of a monster. Either way, what does creativity—its stops and starts, its triumphs and disappointments—look and feel like for them? Characters come alive on the page when they're in action, and nothing is quite as vivifying as the act of creation.
—Clare Sestanovich, senior editor
In other fiction news, we’re thrilled to share that stories by two of our contributors won O. Henry Prizes this year: Ling Ma for “Winner,” and Daniel Saldaña París for “Rosaura at Dawn,” translated by Christina MacSweeney. They are included in the The Best Short Stories 2025, which is available now.
In case you missed it, our fall issue is here! It features new work by this year’s Windham–Campbell prize recipients and previous winners. Read it in full online now or order a print copy.
A little over a week left to send us your work! Our open submission period ends on September 30. Submit here.
An allegory for the ever-unfulfilled union of life and art. Perhaps Jaikins didn’t know how/when to uncouple the two?