the pinwheel model: an anti-closure argument for writing

the pinwheel model: we try to figure out what a story can be, not what it is or should be. That’s why I dislike and distrust the general notion that a story should be self-enclosed, sealed up, a tiny box. the model i want to think about (not force or push) is the image of a sparkler pinwheel, one that turns in the wind, that takes up a given circumference (the space of the story), but which has different velocities and directions, that shoots sparks outside its orbit. one in which not everything is tied down – characters that blur in and out of frame, events suggested yet outside its reach.