Like a lot of writers, I used to believe in the Muse. I would sit at my desk and wait for inspiration, for some idea that might propel me into a story. I’d also eat a whole lot of cookies and drink a whole lot of coffee while I waited. Sometimes ideas did come, like little solar flares, and then I would write and write, until the flares went out and I was left wondering, “What happened?” My novels’ first drafts usually turned out to be eight hundred unwieldy pages with the story so convoluted that you’d need a road map just to figure out where it started, never mind where it ended or what it meant. To dig out the story, to refine it, took years, but I told myself that that was how a writer works, that that was just part of the process. ...
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