I’m looking forward to learning how this whole thing works. I want to see how the sausage is made. I want to see how these editors and designers and directors and marketers do what they do so well. I want to work with a whole bunch of people who know a whole lot more than I do and to keep learning. My plan is to have a good time—and to keep writing every day.

I remembered the conservative pastor’s wife who changed her name from Alice to Twyla when she discovered her birth mother. But I had no idea, after she became a widow, that she took to making corn wine or that she broke her arm when she fell off a table at the VFW.

I am looking forward to being in my tent again—sensing the changes in the weather, hearing the animals move around at night, feeling that I am entirely outdoors, with nothing but a thin layer of polyester between my tiny tent and the great open sky.

Before long, there is a large pot of soup and everyone in the village is fed, including the two soldiers. A village where everyone said they had no food, eats a meal together—a meal that would not have existed if it were not for a stone.

I told my husband, Peter, when he first announced the idea, I thought it was dumb. I probably didn’t say, “dumb,” because I try to be nicer than that. But I let him know I thought his idea of getting exercise by climbing stairs in the stairwell was, well, kind of dumb.

Usually, I am just finding my way to the coffeepot around 8:30. But now there are men standing on scaffolds, jackhammering bricks at 8:00 right outside my window. If I open the drapes, I can see their boots.

An hour passed, and Katie had almost convinced herself that Felix was gone for good. That’s when he popped up from the basement, his face festooned with cobwebs.

There was a third bloodcurdling scream.

I’m not sure what I expected. But if you ever want to have a renewed appreciation for the U.S., I recommend you go to watch 136 immigrants getting their citizenship.

I thought about what a great idea it was to write a play about a town that was helpful. It was such a simple idea, yet so absolutely right.

We take stories from our youth and struggles we’ve had as adults and heartache and disappointments and moments of indescribable joy, and we make sense of them in a way that defines us—to ourselves.