“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners,” he explained. “The architects plan everything ahead of time . . . They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed . . . as the plant comes up and they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows.” I studied this philosophy, rereading it—trying to discern if I was an architect or a gardener, or something foreign to both spheres.
