Article continues after advertisementWe had never summited anything beyond a modest hill, but we just knew hiking Big Slide Mountain would be easy. I left the big water jug I had brought in the car because there was no way I would need it. Unlike my poor knowledge of hiking, I was aware of how much I didn’t know when it came to writing novels. After all, hiking felt like the thing we had the most control over; the thing that made us feel—despite the prevalence of death—like we could stay alive. Much like hiking, writing was unpredictable.