I tossed off a mention of the pirates early on. And they became integral to the backstory. Sometimes now I imagine them in the woods. They scare me. All men. Dirty and wearing red.

All crises, once averted, become jokes.

At Ucross I learned that I am capable of focusing deeply for long periods of time. I love to write. I don't think I would have said that before this trip.

For me, even when I was pregnant, I wondered, Should we even have children if we're bringing them into this horrible, scary world? But I did have a child, despite these fears - or because of them - and these fears are both contemporary and as old as time.

With my students, I don't offer any simple tips like that, maybe because my own process is pretty messy, but when we workshop we talk a lot about the deeper subject, which is what the story or novel is about. I think defining a narrative's themes can lay bare a narrative's tensions.

The issue is that my book, and so many others, are not available for pre-order from Amazon. I hadn't realized how much that mattered for new authors. And how much Amazon is hurting us.

I tossed off a mention of the pirates early on. And they became integral to the backstory. Sometimes now I imagine them in the woods. They scare me. All men. Dirty and wearing red.