Here at our summer cabin in Wisconsin, where the morning hours are quiet and peaceful, I sit with my laptop and compose short stories that all deal—one way or another—with the trajectory of time on consciousness.

I came to the cabin with all my titles in a folder on my desktop. Things I had jotted down during the year when they popped into my head as I was completing my memoir.

In the wee hours, I study the list and see whether any energy resonates from the words to me, then back to the page. If something stirs in me, I start typing to see where it goes. If the story flows from the words in such a way that hours have passed and I think it’s only minutes, I am on to something.

Stories have unfolded from growth on stems to buds, to a little flowering in a way that seems right to me. In a week, I will gather up my flowering buds in my arms, carry them back to Lawrence, and lay them out in my study for examination.

This fall, I will change from a creator to an analytic technician, working with my stories to make the words more clear, to give them deeper meaning, working to have them resonate for a bigger audience than just myself.