#282: Endings & Beginnings with David Restaino

Don’t forget to use the hashtag #ReedsyMoments to share your stories (and potentially get featured on our social accounts)!



This week, we're running a takeover in collaboration with Reedsy freelancer David Restaino. The winner of this contest will not only be awarded $250 — they’ll also receive a special bonus prize: personal feedback from David himself. For your chance to get insight from one of Reedsy’s very own professionals, read on! Here's David:

Hi writers,

I’m David Restaino, a writer and freelance editor who specializes in short fiction, literary fiction, and children’s books. After slogging through academia and receiving an MFA, I currently work with a literary non-profit and as the associate fiction editor at The Maine Review. As an editor, I’ve worked with several prize-winning and nominated writers. I aim to bring nuance and sensitivity to all my clients’ work, no matter whether they’re an established or emerging writer. For me, it’s the unique voice of the writer that sets a story apart. Helping people find confidence in that is what I strive to do every day. 

Winter signals many things: the closing of one year and the opening of another, the shift into and out of the longest night of the year, the growth or decay of relationships, a gym membership you bought the previous January but never used (or maybe that’s just me). Life is full of these moments of beginnings and endings — big and small — and stories are just the same. A story is a journey, though hardly ever a straightforward one. And in between these moments of the start and the end, an instance of change. Of growth, renewal, discovery, or acceptance. 

This week, I’m offering up five prompts to explore these transitional events and reflect on the power they have to alter the course of one's entire life. Let’s dive in and see what emerges.