murder in the Strait of Malacca, and I was working on my geology books and I didn’t do it. And Shawn wanted me to write about health care; he wanted me to do some kind of economic analysis of costs in New York City hospitals, and I tiptoed back out of his room. And so anyway, the time at The New Yorker—it’s 100 percent stuff that I got into in the first place. But I think that coming upon metaphors and stuff like that while you’re writing—I’m pretty sure that’d be a consistent stream across the two magazines or any other magazine that I wrote for. KM: As a creative nonfiction writer, I was hoping that you would talk a little bit about why nonfiction is for you. I talk about it in my classrooms as this sort of wild frontier that is just so exciting because I can’t see the end of it; it’s so flexible. You do a beautiful job of writing just about what creative nonfiction is in the “Omissions” section. JM: [Quoting “Omissions” from Draft No. 4] Creative nonfiction is not making something up but making the most of what you have. I say that every year to my students. I hope they listen.
22 McPhee