Yesterday, on the phone with my mom, she asked me, “Why don’t you write a fiction book?” This means something particular coming from my mom. She is, after all, the woman who introduced me to Jane Eyre, Anne with an E, Lizzie Bennet, Santiago, and the legendarily flawed Raskolnikov. She, herself, grew acquainted with these literary icons when she was only 12 years old. In fact, she was reading a novel while in LABOR with me! That is how much my mother loves books. So, when my mothers asks me, “Why don’t you write a fiction?” It means something. Most importantly, it means that someone who LOVES books thinks that I have the talent to write a book that she will LOVE. After nearly two decades of writing angry letters and motions and briefs, spending a career arguing with people, I assumed that whatever creativity my mother gave me was snuffed out and that whatever “talent” my middle school teachers detected wasn’t ever strong enough to channel into the kinds of books my mother and I f...