I buy Best American Short Stories every year not only for the quality of the fiction but also for the section in the back which gives a brief biography of each author and then a short statement form him or her about the genesis of the story or the process of writing it. I have dozens of drafts and fragments in a general fiction notebook as well as the two novels that I’ve been working on for at least fifteen years. Ryan Harty’s remark gives me pause:
It took a month or so to get through a draft and more than four years to come up with an ending I liked.
          — Ryan Harty, on the process by which he wrote
                   “Why the Sky Turns Red When the Sun Goes Down”Â
                   first published in Tin House
                    included in Best American Short Stories of 2003