9/21 The football field of the high school is full of boys wearing gold helmets that glint in the afternoon sun. Some of them shove a metal structure around that looks as if it was built to stop a tank. Why is growing up in America so heavily ritualized, so thick with initiations and rites of passage?

Essay class. How do you write to get your story published – I am so completely at odds with this aim that it’s surprising how much I still get out of it. Writing with beat sheets, rising and falling action, character arcs. Funny how this leads to the very earnest question, and not from me: Do you actually think about this while you’re writing?