I spent most of my spring and all of my summer finishing my fourth novel, How Can I Tell You? (Touchstone, August ’09). Hours blurred into days which turned into weeks which…well, you get the idea. The only thing I really remember about this time is asking myself every morning as I sat down and every night as I curled up into a fetal position in bed was, “How the heck did I manage do it the last three times?” You’d think that I’d have some sort of idea of how to write a book by now. I’ve even taught a course on it. True, I have the basics down, but somewhere in the midst of the process, I always find myself scrambling. The worst thing I can ask myself is: What am I doing? Nothing derails a productive, if not creative day, in front of the computer more than self-doubt, self-pity and all those other wonderful little demons that run rampant when the mind is looking for reasons to shut down and take the body to the movies. This time, around late May and early June, I abstained from playing hooky and instead invested in books on plot and…