Writing has always been an integral part of my life, so much so that it is hard to imagine the kind of person I would be if I hadn't defined myself, early on, as a writer. Nonetheless, I've tried, at several points, to make myself into something other than a scribbler, but I've never been able to make it stick; the writing life always drags me back, and that's as it should be, since I'm most content when I'm twisting tangled plot lines or revising a bedeviled sentence for the thirty-fifth time.