I imagine the Reeds regretting their hunger for land and a new life in California and wonder what forms their regret took. Not unlike what we hope for when we make cheese or bake bread. Brie is more than milk and the lining of a cow's stomach, bread more than flour, water, and leavening. The cheese I imagine is gooey, with salty fat globules melting across the tongue. My teeth tear the bread's crust like meat, the chewy center's flesh leaves a tangy aftertaste.
Good writing is in some ways like good cooking.
It takes inspiration, energy, devotion, discipline, and a spark of obsessive human emotion possibly bordering on insanity. It takes not just the right ingredients, but also an eye for flavor, a flare for inventive substitutions. Rising time, baking, cooling and aging time all become inspired transitions. We write some more.