Alright so, I’m on a side of a road somewhere and I’m stuck inside of a very deep hole with no way of getting out. Never mind how I got there, it’s not relevant to the story…I’ll invent a back story. Um I was walking to get pizza and a chasm opened up in the earth and I fell in and now I am at the bottom of this hole screaming for help. And along comes you. Now maybe you just keep walking, y’know there’s a strange guy screaming from the center of the earth. It’s perhaps best to ignore him. But let’s say that you don’t. Let’s say that you stop. The sensible thing to do in this situation is to call down to and say, “I am going to look for a ladder, I will be right back.” But you don’t do that. Instead, you sit down at the edge of this abyss and then you push yourself forward…and jump. And when you land at the bottom of the hole and dust yourself off, I’m like, “What the hell are you doing? Now there are two of us in this hole!” And you look at me and say, “well yeah, but now I’m highly motivated to get you out.”

This is what I love about novels. Both reading them and writing them. They jump into the abyss to be with you where you are.