I wanted to learn my craft, and I had not one but two brilliant writers living under the same roof with me—not to mention novelists of all stripes walking through the door every other day. Forty-Seven West Broadway, Bangor, Maine, had to be the world’s best unknown writing school, but it was mostly wasted on me, for two good reasons: I was a bad listener and a worse student. Alice, lost in Wonderland, observes that she often gives herself good advice but very rarely takes it. I get that. I heard a lot of great advice as a kid and never took any of it.
