It was a lovely goal or rather orientation when it was far away throughout my childhood and teens and college years, but when it came time to do it—well, the mountain is beautiful in the distance and steep when you’re on it. Becoming a writer formalizes something essential about becoming a human: the task of figuring out what stories to tell and how to tell them and who you are in relation to them, which you choose or which choose you, and what the people around you desire and how much to listen to them and how much to listen to other things, deeper in and farther away. But also, you have to
...more
