Yet you taught at Bard and teach now at the University of Virginia. Remember I started teaching only after publishing six novels. Writing courses work best for students who have been out of school for eight or ten years and can benefit from rigorous training. I'm against any MFA program, but I love to teach. He shows them how to imagine being a murderer from the experience of swatting a fly.
Writers are part actors.
I try to make their minds spin. The historical novel was out of fashion. But some of these difficulties have worked in my favor. You saw my reaction to reading aloud the last page of the quintet. Until that ending had been written, the time was not ripe for the book to be known.