I love learning about different dialects and I own all sorts of regional and time-period slang dictionaries. I often browse through relevant ones while writing a story. I also read a lot of diaries and oral histories.

I have always loved the fluidity of language - delighting in dialects, dictionaries, slang and neologisms.

Writing sketches, you're also learning about a journey and characters, and you translate that to bigger things.

Others can make us vulnerable and the sooner such vulnerabilities are dealt with the better

On the last drafts, I focus on the words themselves, including the rub of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet even at this stage I'm often surprised. A different ending or a new character shows up and I'm back to where I began, letting the story happen, just trying to stay out of the way.

With writing, I love doing it, but there's that love-hate relationship: You're not having a good run, you've hit a wall; it's frustrating.