Discipline. Focus. Freedom. Stories.

The writing life is less dramatic than the stories it produces. It is a desk, a notebook I am not precious about, and a fixed number of hours that do not care how I feel about them.

I draft longhand first. The notebook keeps me from editing a sentence before it exists.

Maps come early. I cannot write a journey I cannot walk on paper, so the map gets redrawn until the distances feel true.

Then the slow part: reading it back aloud, cutting what performs, and keeping what is plain.