“Titles are important; I have them
before I have books that belong to them. I have last chapters in my mind before
I see first chapters, too. I usually begin with endings, with a sense of
aftermath, of dust settling, of epilogue.” – John Irving
Novelist
and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Irving (born on this date in 1942) first
achieved critical and popular acclaim with the international success of the 1978 novel The
World According to Garp. Since then
he has had many other best sellers and also had 5 of his novels, including the Academy
Award-winner The Cider House Rules,
adapted to film.
Irving started writing fiction at
age 26, had only limited success and became a college professor before writing
Garp and earning worldwide acclaim. Of
his 15 novels, 4 have reached number one on the New York Times Bestseller List, and
said all of his books grow
out of his development 
of the endings first – not necessarily a unique style but one that has paid big dividends for him.
“I write the last line, and then I
write the line before that,” he said. “I
find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how
that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at
the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.”
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