Writer's Digest

The Science of Writing

“You’re an oceanographer?” The librarian shakes his head, incredulous, his spectacles tossing a circle of sunlight on the floor between us. “I always knew I wanted to be a novelist,” I reply. “So, naturally,

I spent the first two decades of my adult life studying science and math.”

He laughs and then asks, “Ever wish you hadn’t become a scientist?”

That’s harder to

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