Many people have asked about my writing process, and I understand why. It cannot be easy watching me receive so much while struggling with the perfectly natural question of why it did not happen for them.

Recently, I watched Ocean Vuong discuss his writing with Oprah. In the interest of giving aspiring writers access to an equally important perspective, I have decided to share my process in ten steps.

Here's how I write:

1. Have an idea.
2. Allow the idea to fester during work. Do not write it down immediately. Trust your brain. If the idea goes away, another one will happen eventually. If it was a good idea, you might remember it later at Starbucks (see #4).
3. Eventually scribble six words on a piece of paper and put it in your pocket. Throw away the six words along with an old receipt and an uneaten Ricola when you get to Starbucks (see #4).
4. Go to Starbucks. Do not worry that it is a soulless corporate behemoth commodifying the aesthetics of the third place if it's a short walk away and there's an open table. Order the coffee. Sit down. Open the laptop. You have a novel to write. Don't become distracted. I am a Gold member and earn 1.2 stars per purchase, or twice that if I bring my own cup. I doubt I will ever achieve whatever the highest level of Starbucks achievement is because I only order drip coffee and apparently lack ambition. I take it with a splash of cream and two Splendas. Never stevia. Splenda may be artificial, but stevia is gross. That aftertaste. Ick. I can taste it just thinking about it.
5. Write for eleven minutes. Feel extremely productive. Check social media for forty-five. Imagine people being mad at you for writing outside your lived experience or having the wrong ideas about Israel, or mad at you for going to Starbucks (see #4). Oooh, how they'll hate you. Ooooh, the fights you'll have!
6. Do research. This begins with one legitimate historical question and ends with you knowing everything about Maryland cigarette taxes, Soviet electrical connectors, and what was on the Wendy’s SuperBar in 1987. During this period you may also become an expert on people, places, and cultures completely outside your lived experience. Or invent them. Whatever.
7. Imagine being interviewed by Oprah like Ocean Vuong, except instead of discussing Aristotle’s Poetics and admitting you like Melville, you'll admit that you don’t really have time to read and don’t understand anything too complex. Mention that you love going to the library, although you haven’t been lately because you mostly bring books home, leave them unopened on the table, and return them three weeks later because your dog wants treats and apparently that is how you spend your evenings now.
8. Get stuck.
9. Solve the problem while driving, showering, seeing patients, or doing some other activity during which writing the solution down is impossible.
10. Finish the book. When people talk about the metaphors, the character work, and the evolution of the plot, nod along as though it were intentional.

A statement regarding artificial intelligence.

Like many writers working in a changing technological landscape, I think emerging tools are best approached thoughtfully and transparently.

I wrote and published my first novel in 2021, before AI was an option and writers were expected to explain their relationship with it. Throughout the process, I discovered I actually like writing. This presents a fairly serious obstacle to outsourcing it.

Frankly, having a machine generate 300 pages of novel would only leave me with 300 pages I’d have to read. I already return perfectly good library books unopened, as noted in #7, above.

Technology will continue to change, and writers will continue to decide how it fits into their work. In my case, everything I can offer is that the story is mine, the choices are mine, the words are mine, and the finished work says what I want it to say, though as soon as I click send I'll probably want to change it all again.