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Reading and writing are, by their very nature, entwined; but they are separate skills with separate demands. Reading emphasizes close attention to the writer’s main idea, purpose for the communication, tone and method of narrative. Both are recursive activities although a skilled reader who annotates and takes notes may be able to skip a second read while a writer must see each draft as a work-in-progress. How many drafts are necessary is based on skill, experience, connection to the material and time, time between the last edit and the next, time to absorb both the strength and the weakness of the writing. There is a thin blue line in teaching. It may not be as intensely adhered to as say, law enforcement, but teachers rarely criticize each other’s methods of educating students.

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In 1983 I worked at a squash club. I was twenty-six, trying to be an actress, sober, poor as one could be without living on the street. The squash club guys glanced at me while they read their papers. My job was to smile, give them a towel, remember their names, and ask if they wanted anything else. I was also supposed to say, “Good morning.” They were driven captains of industry who knew to take a towel from a stack. I read scripts seeking my type, perky yet depressed. I wrote complaining letters to friends in other countries, started novels, one a murder mystery with a wealthy, ruthless squash player, dead on a squash court. I showed this to a literary agent. “Find a different genre,” she said.

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After my sister was killed, I married a violent idiot, tried to drink myself to death — again — went back to a 12-step program, found an incredible shrink, an apartment, a sponsor, a job, and some tiny hope that I might live despite all the mayhem and chaos and humiliation and lack of sleep and starving myself. I needed a higher power. God was not something I had ever trusted. God didn’t keep my father from drinking, me from drinking, my best friend alive, my sister safe, or anything about the terrible state of the world. Religion was the enemy in my childhood; laced with fear, guilt, remorse, and boredom. Church was a place my cranky grandmother loved beyond anything —

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