On Fear of Failure and Writing “The Book”

I recently came back from the Wellspring Writing Workshop in Lake Geneva, WI. I got to spend a lovely week with a bunch of other writers – only one of whom I’d met before! – and talk shop and boat around on a lake (“We’re on a boat!”) and look at swanky stuff and ride bikes and read books and even play a card game or two.

It was a nice change of pace, and fun to workshop face-to-face with other writers for the first time in a dozen years.

I’d initially planned to finish a really rough draft of...