I sometimes joke with my students that if they find themselves trapped in exposition, writing pages and pages in which their action doesn’t rise, all they need to do is drop this sentence into their story: “Then something happened that changed everything forever.” The story has no choice but to respond.

If I’d been better schooled back then in the art of accompaniment, I would have

understood how important it is to honor another person’s ability to make choices. I hope I would have understood, as good accompanists do, that everybody is in their own spot, on their own pilgrimage, and your job is to meet them where they are, help them chart their own course. I wish I had followed some advice that is rapidly becoming an adage: Let others voluntarily evolve.

The morning after my husband asked me that question, I had a sort of epiphany. I realized that I already had enough money to take a risk. What was holding me back was not financial security; it was plain fear that I might not be good at what I thought I’d be happy doing. I concluded that I might as well change now because I was dying to do something else and it would not get any easier with time. The next day—a year and a half ago—I quit.

Morrison returned the manuscript as requested but also took a moment to write to Jordan directly.

Last Thursday I returned your material to your lawyer at her request. I didn’t want to call you with if-y information— only with a yes or no. . . . I can’t figure out why you didn’t trust me; I know you wanted things settled but, had no idea there was a time crisis involved; . . . I would have felt so much better if you had given me the deadline and the ultimatum yourself. Keep doing the work though, I love it.

Even as she had some sense of how shy Jones was, Morrison was taken aback by the timidity Jones expressed in the letter. This same writer who wrote the unimaginable seemed uncertain about everything and uncomfortable with anything other than writing.

I don’t know what an agent-writer relationship should be. . . . I feel like I’m in this really strange situation when all I really want to do is to be writing. I wouldn’t even think about contracts. . . . Everything else seems scary and I am really unsure about myself and what I should be doing/saying. I hope that you will forgive me if in all the things coming at me for me to do and say, I have chosen the wrong thing(s) to do or say.