One reason my missives have been so rare these last few months is I was overwhelmed with election-related news and then election-related shock. I will confess that post-election, I've had serious doubts that the story I'm telling with this novel is still the story the world needs to hear. That's a bit inflated -- I don't think I ever had such lofty ambitions, but I did believe the novel could deliver an authentic and hopefully important message at scale. In today's climate, though, it's difficult to look back at the environment that begat the novel three years ago and to consider it anything other than juvenile.

What's helped is the idea that we need to outgrow our stories. Yes, there are big hairy issues affecting the US and the world today, but it's okay to make this time capsule of "my life and loves and worries" circa 2013. (And that's hardly an accurate descriptor anymore, since it's grown and differentiated into a peculiar, autonomous thing.) Though the possibility seems far away that it will reach a person in need of its message, the possibility exists. So long as it does, I have a moral imperative to finish it.

Finding this mode is tough: more often I'm tweaking scenes and thinking about character motivations and trying to give the novel a pleasing structure and shape. But that is head and this is heart, and without heart there is nothing.