But before I get to that phrase, that high board, first I must navigate a fallow period—either blessedly brief or mercilessly long—in which I get in my own way. Eleven books into my writing life, and I still haven’t managed to avoid it, which leaves me with the reluctant belief that it must be fertile in its own fallow way.

I brought a withered flower back to life. I banished flies from my house. I made the cherries blossom out of season and turned the fire vivid green. If Aeëtes had been there, he would have choked on his beard to see such kitchen-tricks. Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me. My powers lapped upon themselves like waves. I found I had a

writing a book is nothing more than a heroic act of unification. How does this work? Well, the book has a spine. A dharma. But you don’t know what its dharma is until you begin to write it. Forget about all the things you said to yourself about your book at the beginning of the project—or what you told your editor, or what you wrote in your brillia