Nothing Is Ever Quite As Bad As

And I See That Not Touching For So Long Was A Drive To The Beach With The Windows Rolled Up So The Waves Feel That Much Colder.

I Know When A Story Is Finished When There Is Not A Single Thing More I Can Think To Do To It. And Since I Know At The Start What The Last Line Will Be, I Know When I've Reached That Point As Logically As I Can That It's Finished. As For The Rewriting-it's Not Foolproof, Of Course, But If You're Honest About Having Thought Of Every Possibility And You Still Come Back To What You Have, What More Can You Do?

An Idea Might Spark An Essay, But Never A Story.

I Assemble Stories-me And A Hundred Million Other People-at The Sentence Level. Not By Coming Up With A Sweeping Story Line.

I Had A Mother I Could Only Seem To Please With Verbal Accomplishments Of Some Sort Or Another. She Read Constantly, So I Read Constantly. If I Used Words That Might Have Seemed Surprising At A Young Age, She Would Recognize That And It Would Please Her.