Sometimes, when you’re writing sentence by sentence, you’re not really sure what footprints you’re going to fall into, or what ghosts might appear.

There are twenty-two stalls in the Barn. Eleven of the stabled horses are, as far as Rutherford can ascertain, former presidents of the United States of America. The other stalls are occupied by regular horses, who give the presidents suspicious, sidelong looks.

How true can this sensation of unity really be if you need to leave everyone you care about to get it.

Even in her trances, even while possessed, my sister was very shrewd about her prospects. A fantasy would collapse like a wave against the rocks of her intelligence. Madness, as I understood it from books, meant a person who was open to the high white whine of everything.

Well, you look weird. New pajamas? Did somebody exhume you last night?” – Kiwi, Swamplandia!

Beverly once read a science magazine article about bioluminescence, the natural glow emitted by organisms like fireflies and jellyfish, but she knows the dead also give off a strange illumination, a phosphor that can permanently damage the eyes of the living. Necroluminescence – the light of the vanished. A hindsight produced by the departed body. Your failings backlit by the death of your loved ones.

When I’m drafting, I suppose it’s an intuitive process – figuring out when something just has a surreal glaze on it and when it grapples with something that could threaten a character’s day-to-day reality.

Hundreds of our old neighbors, friends, coworkers, and teachers are new insomniacs. They file for dream bankruptcy, appeal for Slumber Corps aid, wait to be approved for a sleep donor. It is a special kind of homelessness, says our mayor, to be evicted from your dreams. I believe our mayor is both genuinely concerned for his insomniac constituency, and also pandering to a powerfully desperate new voting block.

Once you figure out what’s best for the story, take out the rest.

The folks I read as a kid really set me up. I owe a huge debt to Ray Bradbury and Madeleine L’Engle.