Eileen says here, of point of view: “Maybe you need to get the bare-bones events of the story or novel down, then go back and think, well, in this scene, who is experiencing it? And redo it from that character’s emotional and intellectual point-of-view. It’s tricky. There’s a lot to learn and to practice.”

And I say: Eileen, will *you* redo it for me?

Reading, or listening to, Eileen discuss craft and the way we approach our own work always reminds me how little I really know, yet how excited I am to figure it out.

Perhaps what I most appreciated about Eileen during my years studying with her at Michigan, however, was her generosity with our work. Not only the incredible time and care that she took to read and comment on our pages, but also her genuine enthusiasm about our projects. She shared our excitement, she cheered for us from the sidelines, and she celebrated our accomplishments. Yet at the same time, she never doled out empty praise. And she sure as hell wouldn’t stand for mediocre or self-indulgent work. Hemingway once said that “the most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-proof shit detector.” Well, if ours ever malfunctioned (or happened to be a recessive trait) you could be damn sure that Eileen would step in to set us straight.

Thanks for this piece, Brian. And also for capturing Eileen’s wonderful sense of humor. Her insight has benefited me hugely over the years, both in terms of my own work and how I teach the craft of writing to my own students now.