Every once in a while someone will ask me for advice about becoming a writer, and when this happens I always clam up. I am bad at giving advice, I usually say, because the path I took to get to what I am doing now feels haphazard and irregular and full of lucky accidents. But this is not true, or maybe more accurately that haphazardness is true for everybody. I am starting to think that the best advice — the only advice, maybe — you can give comes out of your own haphazard, irregular, lucky, accidental experience.