At my writer’s group last night we had a difference of opinion. Half of us thought a short story ended with a narrator’s father in the intensive care unit of a hospital, and the other half thought it ended with the narrator herself there.

The other half was right, said Cathy, who wrote the story.

But this raises some questions, the kind you can’t help but ask yourself if you believe that the endpoint of self-expression is to communicate with an audience. Because the essay or novel, play or story takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? It is reshaped and relived every time a new reader comes to it, takes its words into her mind, makes it her own.

Even though I stood corrected, even though I realized that I had to some extent missed the point, the piece I read worked well on its own, the details of landscape and sky were no longer that of a pain-fogged dream but of an actual journey through a quiet forest. Because when the words leave our pen or keyboard they stop being ours and become the reader’s. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, I think. In a very important way, that’s the point.

Speaking of ink on paper, today we upload  the files of the magazine I’ve been working on these last few months. I’ve been thinking about the way it used to be, other magazines I’ve worked on and how those files were delivered — on boards via Fed Ex or (when we were too late for that) via a package delivery system called “Delta Dash.” I used to send articles to magazines in hard copy, too.

It’s much easier now, of course — write the article in a Word file, attach it and send it off with the click of a mouse or the touch of a finger. Upload whole magazines that way, too.

But the other way — the “old-fashioned” way — had a certain drama. There was the last-minute rush to the post office or Fed Ex, often with a child or two in tow. There might be minutes left before the place closed down. I would scribble my editor’s name and address as quickly as possible, then stuff the manuscript in an envelope and send it off. This was always the day before the deadline, of course.

Now I push some keys and it’s gone. I don’t want to go back. Don’t get me wrong. I’m just remembering.

Last night, a conversation about writing. About finding the time, setting deadlines, asking for help. Setting scenes, learning dialogue — these things aren’t easy for the journalist turned memoirist or the short-form writer turned long-form writer, my friend and I agreed.

But there are universals. The scrap of paper a child played with today in her stroller as her mother wheeled her up the Metro elevator. The bald woman in the flowered dress who waved to the conductor. Every day, a barrage of details finds its way into our brains. How to preserve them? How to honor them?

The details we seek as reporters are within us, and it’s up to us how we use them. One day they may surprise us.