My folder of drafts of this passage now runs to forty pages, excessive and obsessive perhaps, but it is after all the beginning of the book and must be right. I have noticed over the years that my digging at, fiddling with, scratching away at a scene will often turn up something much more fundamental than a new image or a livelier verb. In this case, I gradually realized that the reason the scene must be in somebody else’s voice is that the heroine does not remember it. Traumatized by her flight, she cannot recall witnessing her father’s death until she is nearly fifty years old. When I realized that, I understood much better what story I was telling and how the plot could be shaped and resolved.

Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction, Tenth Edit…, loc. 698