Usually, I’ll write the beginning of a story in a rush—somewhere between a paragraph and two or three pages, hit a wall abruptly, and then need to let it sit anywhere from a month to two years until the rest comes. This was no different. I think I had three paragraphs for half a year before anything became clear. I used to beat myself up over that stuckness, but now I just make sure I’ve got a lot of things on the go at once so I can move between things when something is jammed. Nothing will loosen it but time. I definitely don’t hear voices or anything that fancy but I do think there’s an aspect of creation in which you need to take seriously that the characters will speak to you if you give them time and get out of way as much as you can. So I’m trying.