Sep 7, 2008

Shiloh | 'Shiloh' Revealed

In the following essay, Mason discusses the evolutionary process of writing ''Shiloh " as a story that revealed itself to her slowly.

I have been pleased and very surprised by the popularity of my story "Shiloh." I could not have imagined when I wrote it that it would be widely anthologized and that students would be discussing it in class. I did not think that far ahead. I couldn't, if I expected to keep my attention on what was unfolding in the story.

In trying to recall how this story came about, I can share with you something of the writing process. As students, you read a finished work, and you try to read it as fully as possible. But from the writer's point of view, during the writing itself, that finished work...