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I’ve often written too fast. This is partly because I didn’t start publishing short stories until my mid-thirties and have always felt a few steps behind. But it’s mostly because I’m impatient. A while ago I wrote a novel far too quickly. I decided soon after I finished a draft that it was broken beyond repair. It had some good moments, but it was a mess of ideas, inconsistencies, and confused themes. And it lacked that mysterious extra thing, that thing I suspect can only come through time and patience, that intangible, unknowable thing that can make the last line ring clear.