“It was the hardest thing I’d tried to do in my life, and I arrived in Virginia as someone who was freelance writing in the morning, waiting tables or teaching at night, and then coming home to sleep a little before doing it all over again. I was getting writing done but I knew I needed to go deep, to enter my novel for more than the hour or two my home life offered, and not emerge too much before I went back in for more—a swimmer coming up briefly for air before submerging again.”