Writing is, by necessity, a profession of emotions. Emotions are at the heart of character, and character is at the heart of story. And at the heart of the human brain is a quirk that by describing a feeling, you invoke it in yourself. So, there’s no part of writing a novel that is not going to put the writer on an emotional roller coaster. And people wonder why we tend to drink so much…

But there are other ways that the work itself gets emotionally involving. One comes at the very beginning....