I’ve found a human writing trampoline who, for the extraordinary price of frustratingly average lunches, lets me bounce ideas off him. He listens and asks questions as I talk through plot points, characters, themes, and other various stumble-grumbles quick to launch themselves over baskets of fries. It is a purely artistic process, one unconcerned with anything other than ideas and the golden threads that hold them together.

Over a recent mediocre salad, I bemoaned to him, “I’ve got everything else. I don’t know how the book ends.” In other words, I’m wandering around this process without a clear destination. Great for Passover and Hobbits, not so great otherwise. (*Raises a glass of wine or four to the Hobbitses among us as they groom their feet for the day’s travel.*)

Ultimately this is why, an obscenely long time after a first draft has been written, dismantled, and reworked into multiple drafts…