“To refer back to the conversational model: some conversations feel evasive, ill-considered, agenda-laced, selfish; others feel intense, urgent, generous, truthful. What’s the difference? Well, I’d say it’s presence. Are we there or not? Is the person across the table there (to us) or not? Writing fiction, we’re in conversation with our reader, but with this great advantage: we get to improve the conversation over and over with every pass. We get to “be there” more attentively. When we’re reading along and something deflects our needle into the N zone, this tells us that, in the instant of the writing, we weren’t there.” (George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain)
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