“What is it about?”

“It’s about how we change in response to outside pressures.”

“Boring. What is it about?”

“It’s about three teenagers trying to stay alive.”

“Better.”

“This isn’t helping.”

“Let me see the manuscript.”

The next day: “It wasn’t about that at all.”

“What?”

“It’s not about people changing, or trying to stay alive. That’s incidental. It’s about alienation, Fox News, and the corruption of the Bush White House. Allegorically, of course.”

“No, it isn’t. Okay, the one character is alienated, but that’s about it.”

“Wrong. His friends are alienated, too, from their family and friends and a corrupt government. The government lies to the people, aided by the mass media.”

“There are no mass media in the story. It’s a fantasy world.”

“Your storyteller characters are the media.They are complicit in the government’s lies.”

“But I wrote that part before Bush took office.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s all right there in the story.” He looked at me kindly. “Writers never know what the story is about.”