What’s the Point of Writing?

By Sarah Carson

What’s the point of writing, anyway? a lady asks the table.

Four weeks of workshops in the library basement and no one has called her a genius yet, asked to see the manuscript she carries in her purse.

I get it.

In the 8th grade, I quit the basketball team just to make a show of it. The coach pulled me out of study hall, begged me to reconsider, and 25 years later I still remember everything about the moment: the extant hairs of his mustache. The way his glasses fe...