The writing process is certainly a process, but one the writer is only halfway in control of. There are certain things people just don’t tell you about being a writer, mostly because you’ll think you’re being fancifully duped. For instance…

• Writing a villain character is like knowing your son is a mass-murderer, but still having twenty photo albums of every moment in his childhood and tearful memories of the time you sent him off to his first day of school.

• Writing is emotionally exhausting because it requires you to experience the emotions of every character in the story.

• I’ve orphaned characters before purely to avoid the introduction of any more characters.

• Sometimes, even after having a character for four years, two spent in the writing, you may suddenly realize it is imperative you make a Germanic man into a North African woman.

• Writing is like breathing for me. I’ll stop doing it one day, and at that point, I’ll be dead.

• Your non-writing peers may be alarmed to hear you say any of these things aloud.