May I ask where that was — the writing site? WHAT I write, HOW I write, and what and how I write ABOUT can be quite shocking, but I do not write it/things because it/they are shocking. Whatever it is, I write it because I find value in it as a writer, and my hope is the reader will also find value — in whatever way they find it. I’m not invested in controlling that.

I *feel* it when a writer writes for pure shock value, don’t you? It’s a little bit like a Hallmark commercial, or slam poetry competitions: the goal is to emotionally manipulate the audience in order to garner a certain, specific response. It also feels like the writer doesn’t trust me to “get” what he/she is trying to convey, so they want to control and make sure I reach the conclusion the author/artist wants me to reach about the work.

I detest being manipulated that way — hence, I don’t enjoy “chick-flick” or “rom-com” movies. I dislike books that are tidy, Deus ex machina devices or and tropes to “get me there.” As a writer, I avoid those things like the plague. That’s why none of my novels really “conclude” anything for the reader. They are fairly ambiguous endings, all.

However, it’s important to me that my readers feel the ending is satisfying, and they feel that I’ve delivered on my “promise” when they decided to invest their time in reading my book. With every book I’ve written, I make a solemn promise to my reader, one I do not take lightly: it is the promise that after they have invested their time and energy in my words, they will feel as though their lives, minds, “souls” if you will, have been expanded, enriched, altered in some small or grand way, (and anywhere in between the two) or at the very least, challenged, by my work.

I enjoy being treated like an adult when I read something. So I treat my readers as adults. I want them to sigh at the end and say “yes.” Even though things in the book may still be unresolved or “up in the air,” so to speak. Philip Roth was a master at this type of ending. There are very few books where I have the last line in it memorized, but I have one of his in my head forever, and as I think of it, I still get chills.

So, in short (or in very long, as it were ;) “To create a ‘sob in the spine’ of the artist-writer,” as Nabokov once said — that s my goal.

Thank you for your kind words and for the lovely dialogue. I hope to see and read more from you here on Medium. :)