I started speaking again in November, six weeks after I had stopped.
It happened at work, in a meeting about a new manuscript. Priya was there, and two other editors, and we were discussing a first-time novelist whose work had potential but needed revision. I had been writing my notes on a legal pad, as I had done for weeks, when something in the conversation caught my attention.
"I think the ending is too neat," one of the editors said. "The protagonist forgives her mother and everything is fine. It does not feel real."
I reached for my notepad. And then I stopped. And then I said, "What if the protagonist does not forgive her? What if she chooses to walk away and that is the ending?"
The room went quiet. Priya looked at me. The other editors looked at me. I had not spoken in a meetin
