FBR 75: After you have been properly snake-bit . . .

We've talked before about sequence. The order in which a writer chooses (or does not or may not choose) to assemble the shelf of his or her career seems hugely significant in the course of an ongoing writing life, certainly more so than after it's over and the task of summing up an oeuvre, a body of work, is left to someone else.

Last night I asked a novelist how she approaches her next book. "I never leave a book without knowing what I'm doing next, and I start it within a week of finishing t...