I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.
The strands are all there; to the memory nothing is ever lost.
Fantasy is no good unless the seed it springs from is a truth, a truth about human beings.
Time is anonymous; when we give it a face, it's the same face the world over.
Each story tells me how to write it, but not the one afterwards.
All good writers speak in honest voices and tell the truth.