If we cannot win, we can at least deprive them of the victory.

When we say I won't take this anymore, that's when we know who we are and what we'll tolerate. Until we're tested, we don't know those things. That's when we wake up. That's when we know who we are. That's when people will show up and take your side. When you decide what it is you stand for, when standing is the hardest.

The answer, of course, was that the stories had been written as well as could be expected given the tools I had when I wrote them. Every writer starts with the same toolbox, which at most might contain a screwdriver and a pair of rusty pliers, and there’s not much you can make with that. Each finished story adds a new tool to the box that assists in the construction of better stories going forward, and reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the prior work.