“Not really. I was half-heartedly working on this other, not-very-good novel. At the time I thought I was going to continue on with this other project, which is now in a drawer, and no one will ever see. But I had just joined this new writing group, and was thinking of committing myself to writing more. Part of why I dug in and started writing about Lee was because I had a deadline for my writing group. I said, ‘It’s now or never.’ I wrote a first chapter to hand into them. None of that chapter actually made it into the final book. I just had to rip the Band-Aid off and get going on it.”