Years ago, when I first began my study of writing, I was both fortunate and cursed to land, right off the bat, a spectacularly good workshop teacher for fiction. My initiation into the craft of writing was through a teacher and mentor who knew precisely what he was doing, and by that I mean, he was conscious of everything he wrote. That was the fortunate part, as he awakened in me the same appreciation of the power of storytelling, and all that was possible provided you’d given serious though...