This is my reminder to me, and maybe to you too, that every book I write reminds me I don’t know how to write books, and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

I am experienced at it but experience — in THIS regard, in the world of telling stories and writing books — does not equate to expertise. Which is good. There are no experts in this forbidden land. Every story is an unexplored place; there are no seasoned guides.

Writers are so good at giving writing advice and even better at giving that advice to themselves, mythologizing the process to a folkloric degree — and yet, every book and story demands its own process. At least for me.

“BUTT IN CHAIR 2000 WORDS A DAY NO ADVERBS NO PROLOGUES,” you say, and then the thing you’re writing is like, “wel fuck all that.” The lessons you learn for one story are for that story alone, quite often.

You enter a story empty-handed, and all that you build and collect and hoard during its writing will not go through the portal on the other side. Which means you leave the story as empty-handed as you entered it.

Again, at least for me! YMMV. Which is arguably the point.