Maybe you didn’t need to know anything special to write a work of fiction. Maybe you didn’t need to delve into some kind of life question you knew you’d lived. Perhaps your subconscious would do...

She meant you have to live a story for a time.”And?”And then you can write it, in time. What have you lived?”Kind of a personal question for Twitterland.”Kind of the perfect question to answer in...

No deal. I want a novel. September sounds good.

The instruction here is not for every kind of writer – not for the writer of nurse books or thrillers or porno or the cheaper sort of sci-fi – though it is true that what...