John Irving, author of Cider House Rules and A Prayer For Owen Meany, says in this interview:

“The research is the easy part. Anybody can do research. The plotting of the novel, writing the ending before you write anything else, which I always do—I don’t know that everybody can do that. That’s the hard part…

“Anyone can learn about something, but to know where a book ends, to feel the ending, to write the last four or five pages so that you know what the tone of voice is, what the combination of melancholy and sorrow or whatever should be—you’ve got to know that. Or I do. It’s like a musical note that you’re aiming toward for the next five or six years.”

QUESTION: Have you ever tried starting with your endings? Or is that something you would never do?