Is This Your Masterpiece?

Today, while speaking to high school students about the writing life—about stories salvaged and stories ruined, about the decisions we make about the shapes on the page—a hand shot up, a question: "How do you know when you've written your masterpiece?"

How indeed?

And can we trust each story to better than the last? And can we count on the sky to still stretch on and on, and past?

We writers know we're not immortal. We want to believe, we have to believe, that we're infinitely bound-less.