The short story that eventually grew into Constellation was the first fiction set in Russia that I'd ever written, and that was right around the time I was giving up on a doomed, never-to-be-seen first novel. While I saw it could be something bigger, in hindsight fortuitous timing was as responsible as anything.

You are mine. I recognize you. We twist our souls around each other's miseries. It is that which makes us family.

We twist our souls around each other’s miseries.

Invader and invaded held on to their fistfuls of earth, but in the end, the earth outlived the hands that held it.

From personal experience, I completely agree that it is often easier to go for monotone sadness. When I was starting out, I wrote a gazillion short stories that ran the gamut of human suffering - drug addiction, child abuse, terminal illness, loved ones dying by all manner of misfortune, etc. In hindsight, it's clear that I mistook the power of the situation for the power of the story.

You are a coward,' she said, and with that one word wrote a denunciation, a biography, and a prophecy.

She wouldn't climb out of the bed for her sister, but she had climbed into a crater. She wouldn't cross a room, but she had crossed a continent.