I can only allow myself to create new. Too many times I’ve revisited old attempts at works, miring myself in past writing and thoughts. No more. No more reinventing, no more trying to salvage. Enough.

Over the past eight years, one thing that’s different is that I take longer breaks. I’ll sometimes go months without writing, which is not something I used to do. I used to write every day. I still take a lot of notes, but I think I allow myself more time to be receptive to the world, as opposed to always worrying about saying something. I think it’s very much a poet’s novel, which means it’s basically—a woman stands out in a field thinking about other times she stood out in a field. And I think a lot of my energy when living in the city was going towards the performance of being human. That idea of “Hello! Look, I got dressed today. Ta-da!”