I think I was waiting for someone to anoint me with the agency to write the novel. I’d had some invitations based on some op-eds to do a nonfiction book, but the fiction thing felt so elusive to me, and I felt like it ran parallel to the path that I was on, and I couldn’t close the gap until I just sat down and wrote the entire thing. It required so much faith. I’ve been a freelance journalist for a long time too. When you can enumerate the amount of time that you’re not getting paid on anything because you’re doing all this work on spec, that was so hard. I really didn’t believe in myself nearly enough to finish a novel and I don’t know what that testifies too. I’ve always been really responsible and I’ve always had a very high savings ratio. I’ve been a sellsword in terms of the jobs I’d take. I took a break for three months for the second rewrite of this book and that was really, really scary. I don’t know if I’d be able to do it if I was any younger. It really took me my entire life to get here, despite knowing I’d wanted to be a novelist my whole life.