Or do they?
Each time I begin a new piece of writing — whether it’s a novel, a short story, or an essay — my goal is to challenge myself. I want my new “comfort zone” to be uncomfortable.
I experimented with genre when I wrote SUBWAY LOVE, a magical realism novel about a girl from the past and a boy in the present who meet, and can only meet, on the downtown F train. Think: The Lake House meets Romeo and Juliet.
ANYTHING BUT TYPICAL was the first time I truly stepped into the fictional voice of someone who was nothing like me, a 12-year-old boy diagnosed with autism. Though, I was quick to find how similar he and I actually were.
The first time I tried to write in third-person multiple was in BASKETBALL OR SOMETHING LIKE IT. (Please forgive me for that title. It was not my choice!) 
In NINE, TEN : A SEPTEMBER 11th STORY I wanted to see if I could write a book with a countdown to an ending that everyone already knew, and yet still have readers want to find out what was going to happen.
But you will never find the following titles – all written well after I had been published – anywhere:
SONG OF MYSELF is a historical imagining of Isadora Duncan’s childhood in 1830s San Francisco.
I researched my book THE SEASON OF THE STARS by visiting The Oakwood Apartment Complex in Hollywood, where every year dozens of would-be child movie stars and their parents live during casting season.
TRUE TO YOU was actually accepted in a two-book contract (and edited!) before I decided to pull it (it was terrible) with the commitment to write something else. RUBY ON THE OUTSIDE turned out to be that “something else.”
WITNESS is a memoir that will never see the light of day.
So is CLOSER TO THE SUN, by the way.
I am sure, if I put my mind to it, there are more manuscripts buried deep in the recesses of my computer files. Because that’s the side effect of experimentation. Sometimes you fail. And fail big. Even after many revisions, sometimes after years of writing and rewriting, it just doesn’t happen, and you have to let it go.
But sometimes there are failures that just won’t stop calling to you, nagging you, tugging at you. Begging you to pull them out of that proverbial bottom desk draw, and try again. And again. And maybe again.
That’s what is happening to me now. I am waiting to hear back from my agent on a literary novel for adults (“Adult novel” sounds a bit inappropriate, doesn’t it?) that she has read at least ten times in various iterations, and she is – for some wonderful reason – continuing to work on with me.
I get it.
Clients I work with often have a story they’ve been carrying around in their heart for a long time, that they’ve finally gotten down on paper. Of course, what everyone wants to hear is, “This is great. It’s perfect. I wouldn’t change a word.” If you choose to work with me, you probably won’t hear that.
But what you will hear is that, if you are willing, I will take that journey with you.