The letter to my writing students makes me uncomfortable for three reasons. First, it's being discussed here and there as though it's a How To book. It's not; if it were, it would be longer, because it would have to be complete. It would have to address point of view, for example. Subplots. Work habits. Voice. Theme. Motif. It would have to be more prescriptive and more global.

Second, dudes...dudettes... I'm just a writer too. All I'm doing is laying out some stuff I've learned. I'm not a professor. I'm not grading anybody. Take whatever works, I'll be happy.

Third, and most annoying to me: The thing I most often try to remind myself when I'm working on a story isn't in the letter.

• Don't try to solve the problem by looking outside what you've already written. Look inside what you've already written. The seed of the solution is probably there.

The advantage to this isn't obvious if you're not already used to doing it. (And it may work best for non-outliners, like me...though I actually do outline rigorously, just not in advance and in total.) What it does, is it moves me toward a unified whole instead of away from it. It's also a formal method I can use to actively involve my subconscious in the process of story construction, which I always want to do. Since the story to this point was written without knowing exactly everything, the subconscious has been free to pipe up. This means I'm going to hit a series of walls.

(That's good. Hitting a wall is how I know I'm not just walking down a familiar corridor.)

Structural tightness is related to how many dramatic elements (characters, character actions, outside forces, props, locations, etc.) appear in a story. Ideally, I've got the exact right number of each. When I can get away with not adding one whenever I hit a wall, I stay closer to that ideal number.

It gets easier with practice. When I was starting to be a writer, I would add elements just because they were cool. I'll still do that--but especially when the story is already some distance along its journey, I've also learned to look backward, into what I've already set up. Finding unexpected ways to use what's already there is a lot like finding the unexpected but organic ending that we all talk about loving. Every little payoff is, in a sense, an ending. Often, the setups are already there.

Every plot twist is an ending, too. It's the end of one reader perception and the beginning of another one.

Would outlining it all before I start writing be easier? Yeah, sure. But I like the results I get, and ease isn't a concern. Quality is. This is how I get whatever quality I'm capable of.