As a writer you can and should expect to hear conflicting responses to your story.

A pure love is a selfless love, but can desire ever be selfless?

I think I've learned to be mindful. I may not have taken the time to try to understand narrative techniques, let's say, with any rigor, if I did not also have to try to explain those techniques to someone else.

I lost my job and started painting houses with a friend. The marriage had ended about the same time the career did.

You will feel discouraged; you will lose confidence in your abilities; you will be bored with the characters–and the only way to overcome these obstacles is to write your way through them. And writing always works.

Fiction begins with the senses, and the senses go to work in a place.

Place is character. And all writing is regional.