While teaching a writing workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center, I invited a friend of mine to join me as I had a whole cottage with three rooms to myself, and to be my guest in the workshop of nonficiton.

My pet peeve, I told my writing class, is a story that starts with, I woke up and . . . Why not start later, in the middle of the morning, with the action? But after my class, at 11:59 a.m., I reconsidered my writing teleology.