Stories have shape

The moment you put pen to paper and begin to shape a story, the essential nature of life—that one damn thing after another—is lost. No matter how ambiguous you try to make a story, no matter how many ends you leave hanging, it’s a package made to travel.

Dorothy Gallagher, “Recognizing the Book that Needs to Be Written,” in Writers on Writing Vol. II: More Collected Essays from The New York Times (introduction by Jane Smiley) (New York: Times Books, 2003), p. 65.